His plates are as exhilarating as sparkling champagne, and breathe the soft, plaintive spirit of old ballads. [Illustration: _Baschet._ CAZIN. HAGAR AND ISHMAEL.] Beside this amiable Pierrot _Forain_ is like the modern Satyr, the true outcome of the Goncourts and Gavarni, the product of the most modern decadence. All the vice and grace of Paris, all the luxury of the world, and all the _chic_ of the _demi-monde_ he has drawn with spirit, with bold stenographical execution, and the elegance of a sure-handed expert. Every stroke is made with trenchant energy and ultimate grace. Adultery, gambling, _chambres séparées_, carriages, horses, villas in the Bois de Boulogne; and then the reverse side--degradation, theft, hunger, the filth of the streets, pistols, suicide,--such are the principal stages of the modern epic which Forain composed; and over all the _Parisienne_, the dancing-girl, floats with smiling grace like a breath of beauty. His chief field of study is the promenade of the Folies-Bergères--the delicate profiles of anæmic girls singing, the heavy masses of flesh of gluttonising _gourmets_, the impudent laughter and lifeless eyes of prostitutes, the thin waists, lean arms, and demon hips of fading bodies laced in silk. Little dancing-girls and fat _roués_, snobs with short, wide overcoats, huge collars, and long, pointed shoes--they all move, live, and exhale the odour of their own peculiar atmosphere. There is spirit in the line of an overcoat which Forain draws, in the furniture of a room, in the hang of a fur or a silk dress. He is the master of the light, fleeting seizure of the definitive line. Every one of his plates is like a spirited _causerie_, which is to be understood through nods and winks. [Illustration: CARRIÈRE. MOTHERHOOD.] The name of _Paul Renouard_ is inseparable from the opera. Degas had already painted the opera and the ballet-dancers with wonderful reality, fine irony, or in the weird humour of a dance of death. But Renouard did not imitate Degas. As a pupil of Pils he was one of the many who, in 1871, were occupied with the decoration of the staircase of the new opera house, and through this opportunity he obtained his first glance into this capricious and mysterious world made up of contrasts,--a world which henceforward became his domain. All his ballet-dancers are accurately drawn at their rehearsals, but the charm of their smile, of their figures, their silk tights, their gracious movements, has something which almost goes beyond nature. Renouard is a realist with very great taste. Girls practising at standing on the tips of their toes, dancing, curtseying, and throwing kisses to the audience are broadly and surely drawn with a few strokes. The opera is for him a universe in a nutshell--a _résumé_ of Paris, where all the oddities, all the wildness, and all the sadness of modern life are to be found. [Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._ BESNARD. EVENING.]