In his subsequent pictures Rochegrosse did not go so far afield. His "Murder of Julius Cæsar" was a work of art in white upon white, full of crude imagination, with white walls, white reflections of light, white togas, and dark red blotches of blood. His grass-eating "Nebuchadnezzar" proved that from the sublime to the ridiculous there is often only a step. Between times he painted archæological trifles for ladies of literary culture, such as the "Battle of the Sparrows" of 1890; but in his great "Fall of Babylon" he has proved once more what he can do. No doubt it is not a fine work: it is a mere decorative piece, but an astonishingly spirited performance. The scene is the palace of the Babylonian kings, the decorative construction of which the recovered monuments and the recent scientific investigations had rendered it possible to reproduce. Rochegrosse consulted with the zeal of an archæologist all the treasures of the Louvre and the British Museum,--Assyrian friezes, ornaments, and costumes,--and then set forth in these surroundings the famous banquet at which the Prophet Daniel explained the words "Mene, Tekel, Peres." The day begins to break; in the distance the army of the Medes advancing to attack the palace has burst open the gate; Belshazzar leaves the table in terror, and takes to his weapons; the naked women, still intoxicated, stretch their limbs, or remain lazily indifferent lying on the ground; around is a dazzling confusion of mosaics, of polychrome architecture, of fantastic images of animals, of glittering tapestries shot with many hues and pleasing to the eye; of flowers, vases, fruits, pastry, and nude bodies of women. The grey light of morning strives to overcome that of the half-extinguished lamps, and rests with leaden weight upon the gigantic still-life below. [Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._ REGNAULT. SALOME. (_By permission of M. Georges Petit, the owner of the copyright._)]