"In the continuation of your comments upon the pictures exhibited at the Salon in the last number of your journal you have been unjust towards me upon two points; and as an honourable man you would no doubt wish to remove these injustices in your next issue. In the first place, instead of treating me as you have treated the other artists, my confrères, to whom you have offered, in a few lines, the tribute of commendation which they have merited, you have gone out of your way to discuss, with the public, how, according to your opinion, Poussin would have painted the same subject. I do not doubt, sir, that Poussin, of the same subject, would have made a sublime work; but to a certainty he would have painted a very different picture from the one which you have imagined. I must ask you to believe that I have studied, as carefully as you have been able to study, the works of that great man, and I have, above all, sought to acquire the art of endowing my characters with dramatic expression. You have carried your views a long way, it is true, inasmuch as you have remarked that Poussin would have put the clasps of the cloaks upon the right side, while I have put that of the robe of Caracalla upon the left--surely a very grave error! But I do not surrender so easily concerning the character which you pretend that Poussin would have given to the Emperor. All the world knows that Severus was the most passionate, the most violent of men, and you would wish {10} that when he says to his son, 'If thou desirest my death, order Papinian to kill me with that sword,' he should, in my picture, have an air as calm and as tranquil as Solomon had in similar circumstances. I ask all sensible men to judge whether that was or was not the expression which should have been put on the face of that redoubtable Emperor. "Another injustice, much greater still, is that, after you had endeavoured to discover how Poussin would have treated this subject, you have assumed that I had the idea to paint Geta, the brother of Caracalla, in the personage that I have placed behind Papinian. First of all, Geta was not present at that scene; it was Castor the chamberlain, one of the most faithful servants of Severus. In the second place, in supposing gratuitously, as you have done, that I had the design to represent Geta, you would have been right to have reproached me if I had painted him too old, because he was the younger brother of Caracalla. Thirdly, I should still have been wrong if I had not painted him in his armour. You see, sir, what absurdities you have attributed to me in order that you might indulge your love of criticism. I believe you to be a man too honest to refuse me the satisfaction of making this letter public in your journal. It is due to me to be allowed to explain my own picture and to correct the interpretation which you have given to it without consulting me and without consulting history. {11}