Like so many artists, he had to surmount many a home obstacle; and, being the fourth of a family of seven children, with two brothers devoting themselves to their father's calling, it is no wonder that the good mother wished Hippolyte to try some trade by which he could live. The father had been ambitious; but had been obliged to give up _genre_ for miniature painting. The boys, however, plodded on, and sketched all that came in their way, which seems to have been mainly soldiers; and when a sculptor named Fayatier, happening to see their drawings, gave them a little encouragement, the mother's opposition melted, and they entered the studio of Magnin at Lyons. There and at the Beaux-Arts, they remained seven years, selling drawings and lithographs wherewith to gain a little nest-egg to enable them to go to Paris, the goal then, as now, of ambitious students. It was little enough, but the journey, being taken upon foot, the whole hoard was reserved for household expenses and lessons. Once in the capital, the brothers resolved to put themselves under M. Ingres, if he would allow them, and so encouraging was his welcome, that a friendship soon sprang up between master and pupils. Many traits in Ingres' character which came out in the history of the Flandrins' early artistic career prove him to have been sympathetic to the highest degree; and not a little pleasant is it to find that, when he heard of his pupils' forced asceticism, he exclaimed, "And I was taking their money!" Indeed, there are many anecdotes which prove as much the love of the master for the pupils as the devotion of the pupils for the master. He was inconsolable when Hippolyte failed to gain the _Prix de Rome_. "You have no notion how hard it is for a young man's hopes to be dashed to the ground!" he said to his wife; and he spoke of him as the "Lamb which had been slaughtered." He knew that it was unjust, and he felt the injustice as much as if it had been done to himself.