Prosper Mérimée (born 28th September 1803) came of a family of artists. His father, a man of varied culture, was a good painter, who wrote a book on the technique of his art; his mother was also a painter, well known for her portraits of children; she had a talent for storytelling, and was accustomed to keep her little sitters quiet while she was painting them by telling them interesting tales. The portrait which she painted of her only son in his fifth year gives an equally favourable impression of her talent and of her child's looks. The face possesses a style of beauty very uncommon in such a young boy; for there is something of the pride and intellectual superiority of the distinguished man in this infantine countenance framed in fair, soft curls. The eyes are innocent and frank, but there is mischief in the curve of the sagacious, firmly closed lips. The bearing is that of a little prince.[2] One can quite well understand how this child one day, seeing his parents, who had pretended to be angry with him, laugh behind his back at his tears of repentance, determined "never to ask forgiveness," a determination which he adhered to as a man. His mother, with whom he lived until her death in 1852, was a woman of remarkable strength of character, in whose mind the philosophy of the eighteenth century had engendered such an aversion for every form of religious belief that she would not even allow her son to be baptized--a circumstance which he, in later life, used to mention with a certain satirical satisfaction. To a pious and amiable lady who was using all her eloquence to induce him to undergo the ceremony, he replied: "I will, upon one condition, and that is, that you stand godmother, and carry me, dressed in a long white frock, in your arms."