With some such ideas in their heads the majority of the German painters, in the autumn of 1843, found themselves confronted by Gallait's "Abdication of Charles V" and Bièfve's "Agreement of the Dutch Nobility"; two Belgian pictures which at that time were going the round of the exhibitions in all the larger towns of Germany. And it was not long before the belief in the old gods, which had for thirty years held sway in the city of King Ludwig, was completely undermined by the younger generation. "Even for the great gods, day comes to an end. Night of annihilation, descend with the dusk!" Diogenes expelled from his philosophic tub could not have felt more uncomfortable than the German painters in presence of the Belgian pictures. As till then the incapacity to paint had been belauded as one of the strongest possible proofs of the higher artistic nature and of genuine greatness, so now it was perceived that nevertheless, on the banks of the Scheldt and of the Seine, a much greater school of painting was in full bloom, and producing splendid fruit. [Illustration] CHAPTER IX THE FORERUNNERS OF ROMANTICISM IN FRANCE In France the first decade of the century gave no premonition of the powerful development which was shortly to take place in French art. A legion of characterless pupils issuing from David's studio wearied the world with their aimless works, and hurled their thunderbolts against all rising talent. The austere catalogue of the Salon was a pell-mell of Belisarii, Télémaques, Phædras, Electras, Brutuses, Psyches, and Endymions. Girodet and Guérin wearied themselves in putting on canvas the chief scenes in the classical tragedies at that time so frequently performed--Pygmalion and Galatea, the Death of Agamemnon, and the like--and painted portraits between times; Girodet's dry and poor, Guérin's solemnly vacant. The universal note was that of tedium.