The depression produced in him in the pupil-rooms in the _École des Beaux Arts_ made him doubt himself. Luckily for him, amidst his general ill-luck, this spiritual crisis of his coincided with the great crisis of his country. The war broke out, and Carrière hastened as a volunteer to the front. He did his duty bravely in several battles and engagements, was taken prisoner at Sedan, and, as such, reached Dresden. The months of his imprisonment proved decidedly fruitful to him, for he spent his days in the picture gallery, and was shown by the Rubens pictures there, the ways which, up to that time, he had not clearly seen. After the war was over, he resumed his orthodox studies at the Academy, and became a pupil of Cabanel. It exhibits a good testimony of the power of resistance in his nature that this most inaccurate portrait-painter of the Empire could not influence him, although he had for five years his misleading example before his eyes. In 1876 Carrière competed for the _prix de Rome_. He did not get it. That might have been predicted to him; the prize is the reward of the meritorious industry of the pupil, which flatters the teacher’s _amour propre_. Carrière had then, however, emancipated himself from tutelage as an artist. He felt nowise humiliated or cast down by the failure of his purpose. With brave heart he drew from the occurrence the only true moral, viz., that not the approval of teachers, _i.e._, of those who have succeeded, but the satisfaction of his artistic conscience must henceforward be the goal of his efforts. He renounced official recognition, and that was wise, for it preserved him from the pain of disillusion. From 1877 he exhibited annually in the _Salon_, but it was not before 1884 that the prize judges awarded him an “honourable mention,” which can hardly, however, be called a reward. A year afterwards, he received the medal of the third class, which is “the last kindness,” but at the same time the Baschkirtsew prize of 500 francs, which is awarded, not by the prize-committee, but by the Society of Artists by universal suffrage. In 1887 the Jury rose to the medal of the second class, and, at the Universal Exhibition of 1889, to an insignificant silver medal. With this the series of distinctions vouchsafed to him by the masters of his guild closes. His later honours—the ribbon and rosette of the Legion of Honour, the room reserved for his works at the Universal Exhibition of 1900, the purchase of his “Maternal Love” for the Luxembourg Museum, the commission to paint twelve bays in the Banqueting Hall of the Paris Hotel de Ville—were forced for him from the public authorities by independent opinion. They were the scanty revenue of fame, which the lonely man found when he ceased to seek it. It is characteristic of Carrière that of all the nonsense of medals and decorations there is not a word to be found in the monumental work dedicated to him. They were formerly regarded in France as the great events in the life of