Coigniet's _le Massacre des Innocents_ was hung opposite the door, and riveted attention directly people entered. It showed a woman crouching down, disordered in appearance by a long journey, terror in her looks and very pale, hiding herself, or rather hiding her child, in the corner of a ruined wall, whilst the massacre was proceeding in the distance. It was a fine piece of work, every detail of which, well thought out, well executed, well painted, I can still recall, after twenty-five years. Boulanger had taken the subject of his painting from the works of the famous poet who had just died. Mazeppa, captured, is being bound to a wild horse, which is going to bear him away, heart-broken, fainting and dying, to those new lands where a kingdom awaited him on his awaking. The contortions of the strong young limbs as they struggled, stiffening, against the villains who were lashing him to the back of the savage beast, offered a marvellous contrast, not only in the technical presentation of the flesh, which was quite excellent, but even more so in the physical and moral suffering of Mazeppa as compared with the callous strength of his executioners. Finally, there was Géricault, who, although he was not represented in that year's Salon, was talked about almost as much as those whose pictures hung on its walls. And this was because the new school, wanting a leader, felt that Géricault was the man, even although so far he had only painted a few studies. He had just finished _le Hussard_ and _le Cuirassier_,--which the Musée lately bought back, on the accession of King Louis-Philippe,--and he was finishing his _Méduse._ Poor Géricault! he too was to die, and to die miserably, after he had done his _Méduse._ I saw him a week before his death. The reader wonders how I became acquainted with Géricault? In the same way that I became acquainted with Béranger and Manuel. At my weekly dinners at M. Arnault's house, I often met Colonel Bro, a brave, excellent soldier, to whom every thought of the army was dear, and who had been friendly to me solely because I was the son of a general who served in the Revolution. Of course Bro was opposed to the Bourbon Government. He had a house in the rue des Martyrs, No. 23, and in that house there lodged various people according to their varying fortunes--Manuel the deputy who had been expelled from the Chamber, Béranger the poet and Géricault. One day when we had been speaking of Géricault, who was dying, Bro said to me-- "Come and see his picture _la Méduse_, and the painter himself, before he dies, so that you can at least say you have seen one of the greatest painters who ever lived."