For one moment he thought of exhibiting it out of doors in front of the Louvre, of calling together a popular assembly and summoning all France to decide. But an application to the minister was met with a refusal, and he returned to Brussels hanging his head. There he puffed his masterpiece, "The Fight round the Body of Patroclus," in magniloquent phrases upon huge placards. A poet exclaimed, "Hats off: here is a new Homer." The _Moniteur_ gave him a couple of articles. But when the Exhibition came, artists were again unable to know what to make of it. The majority were of an opinion that Michael Angelo was brutally parodied by these swollen muscles and distorted limbs. And no earthquake disturbed the studios, as the painter had expected. However, he was awarded a bronze medal and thanked in an honest citizen-like fashion "for the distinguished talent which he had displayed." Then his whole pride revolted. He circulated caricatures and cried out: "This medal will be an eternal blot on the century." Then he published in the _Charivari_ an open letter to the king. "Michael Angelo," he wrote, "never allowed himself to pass final judgment on the works of contemporary artists, and so His Majesty, who hardly understands as much about art as Michael Angelo, would do well not to decide on the worth of modern pictures after a passing glance." _Antoine Wiertz_, the son of a gendarme who had once been a soldier of the great Republic, was born in Dinant in 1806. By his mother he was a Walloon, and he had German blood in him through his father, whose family had originally come from Saxony. German moral philosophy and treatises on education had formed the reading of his youthful years. He had not to complain of want of assistance. At the declaration of Belgian independence he was five-and-twenty; so his maturity fell in the proud epoch when the young nation laid out everything to add artistic to political splendour. Even as a boy, their only child, he was idolised by his parents, the old gendarme and the honest charwoman. His first attempts were regarded by his relations as marvels. The neighbours went into raptures over a frog he had modelled, "which looked just as if it were alive." The landlord of a tavern ordered a signboard from him, and when it was finished the whole population stood before it in admiration. A certain Herr Maibe, who was artistically inclined, had his attention directed to the young genius, undertook all the expenses of his education, and sent him to the Antwerp Academy. There he obtained a government scholarship, and gained in 1832 the _Prix de Rome_. From the first he was quite clear as to his own importance. [Illustration: _American Art Review._ WIERTZ. THE ORPHANS.]