after having cut our best pencil, or seized our best pen, let
us labour in solitude, without relaxation, with no other thought than
that of doing the best we can, with no higher judge than that of our own
artistic conscience; and when the work is completed, let us cordially
shake hands with those of our comrades who love us; let us help them,
and let them bring help to us, but freely, without obligation, without
subscriptions, without societies, and without statutes. We have nothing
to do with these free-masonries, absurd when brought into the domain of
intelligence, and in which two or three hundred people get together to
do that, which some new-comer, however unknown his budding fame, would
accomplish at a blow, in the face of all the associations in the world."
This is what I should naively reply to Monsieur Courbet if he took it
into his head to offer me any advice or compact whatsoever to sign.

[Illustration: THE MODERN "EROSTRATE" COURBET.]

[Illustration: IN PROGRESS OF REMOVAL, JUNE 7 1871]

The artists have done still better than we should; they have not
answered at all, for one cannot call the "General Assembly of all the
Artists in Design," presided over by Monsieur Gustave Courbet, and held
on the 13th of April, 1871, in the great amphitheatre of the Ecole de
Medecine, a real meeting of French artists. We know several celebrated
painters, and we saw none of them there. The citizens Potier and Boulaix
had been named secretaries. We congratulate them; for this high
distinction may, perhaps, aid in founding their reputation, which was in
great want of a basis of some kind. But there were some sculptors there,
perhaps? We saw some long beards, beards that were quite unknown to us,
and their owners may have been sculptors, perhaps. For Paris is a city
of sculptors. But if artists were wanting, there were talkers enough.
Have you ever remarked that there are no orators so indefatigable as
those who have nothing to say? And the interruptions, the clamour, the
apostrophising, more highly coloured than courteous! Such an
overwhelming tumult was never heard:--

"No more jury!"

"Yes! yes! a jury! a jury!"

"Out with the reactionist!"

"Down with Cabanel!"

"And the women? Are the women to be on the jury?"

"Neither the women, nor the infirm."

And all the time there is Monsieur Gustave Courbet, the chairman,
desperately ringing his bell for order, and launching some expressive
exc