The idea was not entirely new, for Dumas at his great ball in 1832 had done very much the same. For him all the leading artists of the day, including Delacroix, had painted the walls of the ballroom, as he narrates in a spirited passage of his "Memoirs." But Dumas had not dared to make art take the place of bodily refreshment, for he declares that his guests consumed the bag of several days' shooting and some thousand bottles of wine. _La Bohème galante_, though younger and less known artists were at its command, placed art upon her proper pedestal. Ladders were quickly erected, panels and piers were parcelled out, and the work began. It is a scene on which to dwell in envious imagination. They were perched on ladders, the merry band, smoking cigarettes, singing Musset's songs or declaiming Victor Hugo, with roses behind their ears--a counsel of Gérard's, who, contenting himself with a general survey of operations, recommended a return to the classic festal usage of garlanding the head with flowers. Camille Rogier, smiling through his beard, was painting Oriental or fantastically Hoffmannesque scenes; the burly Gautier executed a picnic in the style of Watteau, a tantalizing subject for thirsty dancers; Nanteuil, with his long golden hair, limned a Naiad; and Adolphe Leleux produced topers crowned with ivy in the manner of Velasquez. Other friends were pressed into service, Wattier, Châtillon, and Rousseau; Chassériau contributed a bathing Diana, Lorentz some revellers in Turkish costume, and Corot on two narrow panels placed two exquisite Italian landscapes. Any comrade might lend a hand, and it was on this occasion that Gautier first made the acquaintance of Marilhat, the Oriental painter, whom a friend brought in and who drew on a vacant space some palm-trees over a minaret in white chalk. It is to this acquaintance that we owe Théo's recollections of this remarkable day. If that room, decorated thus because a few _louis d'or_ for refreshments were not forthcoming, were now existing, only a millionaire could buy, and only a great gallery worthily house, it. Yet regrets are misplaced, for it served its day, and it is well that the _salon_ of Doyenné, with its furniture and its painted panels, in which the happy, money-scorning Bohemians danced at their culminating festival, should vanish before mercenary dealings could soil its freshness.