And meanwhile, away from the broad high-road, and almost unnoticed, was living that painter whom David contemptuously called "the Boucher of his time." He it was who truly cherished the gods of Greece in his heart, under whose brush the dead statues began to breathe and to feel the blood flowing in their veins, as in the old days when the Renaissance dug them out of the ground. His appearance on the stage indicates the first protest against the rigid system pursued by the painter of the Horatii and of Brutus. Prudhon also believed in the antique, but he saw therein a grace which no Classicist had ever seen; he also contrasted the simplicity of the Grecian profile with the capricious, wrinkled forms of the _rococo_ style; he too had spent his youth in Italy, but had not thought it criminal to study Leonardo and Correggio; he did not bind himself either to cold sculpture or to the delicate _morbidezza_ of the Lombards as the only means of grace. He remained a Frenchman heart and soul, in that he inherited from Watteau's age its womanly softness and elegance. In a cold, ascetic age he still believed in tenderness, gaiety, and laughter--he who as a man had but little reason to take delight in life. Prudhon was ten years younger than David, and was born at Cluny, the tenth child of a poor stone cutter. He grew up in miserable circumstances, cherished only by a mother who devoted the whole of her love to this her youngest born, and to whom the child, a delicate pliant creature, clung with girl-like tenderness. His parents used often to send him out with the other poor children of the little town to gather faggots for the winter in the wood belonging to the neighbouring Benedictine monastery. There the handsome, sprightly boy with the large melancholy eyes attracted the notice of the priest, Père Besson, who made him a chorister and gave him some instruction. Here, in the old abbey of Cluny, surrounded by venerable statues carved in wood, by old pictures of saints and artistic miniatures, he recognised his vocation. An inner voice told him that he was to be a painter. And now his Latin exercise books began to fill with drawings, and he carved little images with his penknife out of wood, soap, or whatever came to his hand. He squeezed out the juice of flowers, made brushes of horsehair, and began to paint. He was inconsolable on finding that he could not hit off the colouring of the old church pictures. It was a revelation to him when one of the monks said to him one day: "My boy, you will never manage it so: these pictures are painted in oils"; and he straightway invented oil painting for himself. With the help of the instruction which he now received at Dijon from an able painter, Devosge, he made rapid progress. [Illustration: _Cassell & Co._ GÉRARD. MADAME RÉCAMIER [DETAIL].]