Of the pictures he has exhibited, some are unforgettable, when one has seen them. The “Triumphal Procession” of a gigantic crowned goose through the streets of a mighty city, amid the loud applause of a populace raving mad with loyalty. The “Struggle for Gold” of a number of awful cripples tearing each other to pieces in their mad struggles for a few gold pieces that have fallen in the street; the “Sight of Terror” of a man reeling home at night, apparently after a long drinking-bout, in whose eyes the houses and monuments take weird, living physiognomies, are most impressive utterances of the misanthropic pessimism, the satiric bitterness, and the humour of Veber, also, to be sure, of his predilection for the weird, the ghostly, and the horrible. These qualities are repeated in almost all his works up to now. The greatest and most pretentious, “The Machine,” offends through the daring symbolism by which he illustrates the murderous power of woman over the sensual man. On the other hand, “Sunday Morning” is a bit of life observed with exquisite humour: a barber’s shop in the village, with a soaped victim under the nimble but not too considerate hands of the beard-shaver’s wife, whilst some other customers, of unspeakable comicality in looks, bearing, and dress, smoking, dreaming, staring, or chattering, wait their turn on the bench by the wall. “The Hermit and the Female Faun” is a scarcely orthodox, but keenly witty modernisation of the old theme, the temptation of a saint, which these square-toes of painters for the past five hundred years have cherished with predilection, since it permits them to present quite heathen sights with a hypocritically contrite air. “The Three Good Friends” are of refreshing cheeriness. The ugliness of these contented louts is touching. The painter, by way of exception, exhibits them without malice, rather sympathetically, with a plea for extenuating circumstances. But generally, his wit belongs, in the main, to the species of evil-speaking. We laugh over the malice with which a sharp-tongued observer characterises our fellow-creatures, but we feel quite well that it is not the better man in us that laughs. Jean Veber loves to mock at mankind in goblin fashion. He sees men perpendicularly pushed together like a telescope, horizontally drawn out as short, square gnomes with pumpkin faces, who, pleased with themselves and unconscious of their grotesque ugliness, strut about as if they were so many Apollos and Dianas. Thus Jaurès appears with mouth agape and flourishing gestures on the rostrum of the Chamber, at the foot of which breaks a flood of blustering deputies in stormy session. So in a parody of Rubens’ “Kermes”—itself of the nature of a parody—villagers resembling sacks amuse themselves with feasting and drinking and amorous tendernesses which are calculated to disgust us with love itself. A grandly rigged-out, inexpressibly laughing lady