Beside these pictures let me print Bertrand’s portrait of the imaginary Gaspard de la Nuit: “A poor devil whose exterior announced nothing but poverty and suffering. I had already noticed in the garden his frayed overcoat, buttoned to the chin, his shapeless hat that never brush had brushed, his hair long as a weeping-willow, combed like a thicket, his fleshless hands like ossuaries, his mocking, wretched, and sickly face; and my conjectures had charitably placed him among those itinerant artists, violin-players and portrait-painters, whom an insatiable hunger and an unquenchable thirst condemn to travel the world in the footsteps of the Wandering Jew....” It is different from the portraits of himself, but not more different than would be such a Germanicised caricature as might have been made by Hoffmann. Bertrand’s life in Paris was hidden from the celebrated men whom he met at Nodier’s evening receptions and in Sainte-Beuve’s study. He showed himself for a moment, recited some of his verses “d’une voix sautillante,” and disappeared. He had no money, and probably suffered from that lack of confidence which can only be removed by a banking account. Sainte-Beuve, who saw him two or three times and gave him a copy of the _Consolations_, with the inscription “Mon ami Bertrand,” speaks of him threading lonely streets with the air of Pierre Gringoire, the out-at-elbows poet of _Notre Dame de Paris_. He paints what must be an imaginary portrait of the young and penniless genius leaning on the window-sill of his garret, “talking for long hours with the pale gilliflowers of the roof.” Unable to earn a living in Paris, he went back to Dijon in 1830, where he contributed to a Liberal newspaper, _Le Patriote de la Côte-d’Or_. In spite of his poverty, his blood was young and proud, and as he walked the streets of Dijon he must have felt himself a representative of that exuberant young Parisian manhood that was putting _Hernani_ on the stage and sending _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ to the press. A rival paper jeered at him, and he was able to reply: “Je préfère vos dédains à vos suffrages,” and to quote a letter from Victor Hugo to explain his independence. Hugo had written: “Je lis vos vers en cercle d’amis, comme je lis André Chenier, Lamartine et Alfred de Vigny: il est impossible de posséder à un plus haut point les secrets de la facture.” With such a testimonial in his pocket he need not care for the scorn or the approval of a provincial journalist.