love; they are only busied in filling up the space so as to produce an agreeable effect, and in disposing themselves in picturesque groups. Even the faces have been vulgarised by idealism: everything is as noble as it is without character. There is something of the hermaphrodite in Couture's work. His art was male in its subjects, female in its results. His "Decadence" was the work of a decadent, a decadent of Classicism. [Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._ COUTURE. THE TROUBADOUR. (_By permission of M. Charles Sedelmeyer, the owner of the picture._)] CHAPTER XII THE POST-ROMANTIC GENERATION Four years after Couture painted his "Roman Orgy," Napoleon III ascended the throne, and the Parisian orgy began. It was a remarkable spectacle that the capital offered in those days--a spectacle of fairy-like, flashing and sparkling splendour. Even to-day, when Republican Paris endeavours as much as possible to obliterate every memory of the Empire, Napoleon's spirit lives in the external appearance of the city and hovers over every conspicuous point. Augustus might say that he had found his capital a city of plaster and lime, and left it one of stone and bronze; Napoleon has the right to maintain that he raised palaces where there had been barracks. Notwithstanding all the imprecations uttered against his rule, the most thorough-going Republicans reluctantly concede to him the possession of one good quality: he knew how to bring prosperity to the shop; "_il faisait marcher le commerce_." One hears it said that the beautiful city on the Seine is but the shadow of what it then was. "_Le niveau a baissé!_" says the Parisian, when he calls to mind the gorgeous days of the Empire. The extravagant elegance, the magnificent luxury, which used to roll in superb carriages along the Boulevards and the Champs Elysées towards the Bois de Boulogne, and exhibited itself in the evening in the boxes of the theatres; the lustre which emanated from the Court, and the concourse of all the nabobs of the world,--all this must in those days have given to Parisian life a sparkling splendour, a something stupefying and intoxicating, an alacrity of enjoyment which had no parallel elsewhere. To the respectable, pedantic _bourgeoisie_ which ruled under Louis Philippe had succeeded a new generation of men of the world, which drank to the lees all the refined pleasures that a modern great city has to offer. The gentlefolk of the Empire understood the art of living better, cultivated and exhausted it after a more inventive fashion, than any generation that had gone before. In the Tuileries sat the man of the Second of December, the connoisseur and promoter of all refined tastes. In his person the age was embodied, that age depicted by Zola in _La Curée_, in the passage where he describes the halls, illumined as if by enchantment, of the imperial palace. There, all the splendour of over-civilisation glitters and gleams, with its bright eyes