His labours were twice interrupted: first, by an attack of typhoid fever, through which his mother came to nurse him; and secondly, by the Revolution of 1848 when, in compliance with the expressed desire of his comrades, he was appointed adjutant major of the National Guards. It was about this same period that he received a first class medal and found himself well advanced upon the road to fame. "I have always had the nomadic instinct," Gérôme used to declare, and complacently questioned whether he did not have a strain of gypsy blood among his ancestors. In his notes and souvenirs, which he entrusted to his relative and friend, the painter Timbal, he confesses, along with his various artistic scruples, his passionate love of travel. [Illustration: PLATE III.--ANACREON WITH BACCHUS AND CUPID PIERRE LAFITTE & CIE, PARIS (In the Museum at Toulouse) Gérôme had a magic brush that permitted him to undertake all types of painting with the same facility. This is how he so often happened to treat subjects taken from antiquity and was able to render them in all their classic beauty. It is not without interest to compare him, in this style of painting, with Nicholas Poussin, whom he admired, and with Puvis de Chavannes, whose method he execrated.] He was haunted by a longing to visit Greece, and more especially the Orient, with its marvellous skies, its resplendent colours, its barbaric and motley races of men. In 1853, in the company of a number of friends, he traversed Germany and Hungary, planning a lengthy visit to Constantinople. Owing to the war, he was forced to cut short his trip at Galatz. But he brought back a collection of energetic and striking sketches of Russian soldiers, which later served good purpose in his _Recreation in Camp, Souvenir of Moldavia_. And in like manner, in all his distant journeyings, he invariably showed the same eagerness to seize and transcribe his original documents, content to let them speak for themselves, without his having to distort them to fit the special purpose that he had in view. This painting found a place in the exposition of 1855, together with _The Age of Augustus_, a notable achievement in which Gérôme revealed the measure, if not of his true personality, at least of his lofty conscience and his integrity as an artist enamoured of accuracy and truth, even in the imaginary element inseparable from this type of allegorical apotheosis. Notwithstanding a few dissenting opinions, these two works were judged at their true value, and Gérôme received the cross of the Legion of Honour. At this time he was scarcely more than thirty years old. A most brilliant career henceforth lay open before him. Gérôme remains, beyond question, the unrivalled painter of Egypt, whose aspects, enchanting and sinister alike, he has reproduced in a series of pictures of finished workmanship and vibrant colouring.