Gros' heroes know, as David's do, that they are important, and show it perhaps too much, but at least they act. The painter felt what he was painting, and an impulse of human love, an heroic and yet human life, permeates the picture. Moreover, Gros did not content himself with the scanty palette and the miserable cartoon-draughtsmanship of his contemporaries. This treatment of the nude, these despairing heads of dying men, show none of the stony lifelessness of the Classical school; this Moorish courtyard has no resemblance to the tragedy peristyle so habitually employed up to that time; this Bonaparte laying his hand upon the dying man's sores is no Greek or Roman hero. The sick men whose feverish eyes gaze upon him as on the star of hope, the negroes going up and down with viands, are no mere supernumeraries; the sea lying in sunshine beyond, full of bustling sails, and the harbour gaily decked with many-coloured flags, point in their joyous splendour of colouring to the dawn of a new era. The young artists were not mistaken when, in the Salon of 1804, they fastened a sprig of laurel to the frame of the picture. The State bought it for sixteen thousand francs. A banquet at which Vien and David presided was given in honour of the painter. Girodet read a poem, of which the conclusion ran as follows-- "Et toi, sage Vien, toi, David, maître illustre, Jouissez de vos succès; dans son sixième lustre, Votre élève, déjà de toutes parts cité, Auprès de vous vivra dans la postérité." [Illustration: PRUDHON. THE VINTAGE.]