It was Scheffer who transferred to canvas Dante's great and exquisite story of Francesca da Rimini, a conception which all dramatic poets have failed to reproduce; Scheffer found time to join in every conspiracy going, in Dermoncourt's, Caron's and la Fayette's, and yet managed to become one of the finest painters France has ever produced. Then there was Delacroix, whose _Massacre de Scio_ roused much discussion among all schools of painters. Delacroix was doomed to be pursued by fanatical ignoramuses and determined vilifiers, just as was Hugo in literature; he had already become known though his _Dante traversant le Styx_; and all his life he maintained the privilege--rare among artists--of being able to arouse a storm of hatred and of admiration upon the production of each fresh work. Delacroix is an intellectual man, full of knowledge as well as imagination, but he has one idiosyncrasy, he will persist in trying to become the colleague of M. Picot and of M. Abel de Pujol, who, let us hope, will happily have none of him. Next comes Sigalon, with his rough, passionate Southern nature. His picture, _Locuste faisant sur un esclave l'essai de ses poisons_, had been recommended to the notice of M. Laffitte, and this banker patron of art bought it, probably before he had seen it; when it was hung in his salon, it terrified the bank clientèle and all the jobbers of the money market. Everyone asked the future minister why he had bought such a horrible picture, rather than one of Madame Haudebourg-Lescaut's or Mademoiselle d'Hervilly's little gems. M. Laffitte was plagued to such an extent that he sent for Sigalon and begged him to take back his _Locuste_, which threatened to send the great ladies of the commercial world into hysterics, imploring him to paint him something else in its place. Sigalon took back his _Locuste_, but I do not know what he gave in exchange. Alas! Sigalon was among the number of those destined to premature death. He was sent to Rome to copy Michael Angelo's _Last Judgment_, and he had but just time to bequeath that great piece of work to France, and to stretch out his arms towards his country, before he died. Schnetz had three pictures in the Salon of 1824--two great canvases which might have been painted by anybody just as well as by himself, and one of those _genre_ paintings in which he is inimitable. This _genre_ painting was called _un Sixte-Quint enfant_, the subject being a gipsy woman predicting he would become pope. The reader will guess with what fidelity Schnetz succeeded in depicting in his canvas, six foot high by four feet wide, an old fortune-teller, a shepherd lad and a young Roman girl: the _Sixte-Quint_ was a masterpiece.