icant form. Whatever of their personalities may reach us has
passed through the transmuting fires of art: they never prattle. The
Primitives are always distinguished; whereas occasionally the _douanier_
is as much the reverse as the more successful painters to the British
aristocracy are always.

Yet I daresay it was this jovial and unaffected good-fellowship, quite
as much as his unquestionable genius, that won the brave _douanier_ his
place in the hearts of those brilliant people who frequented what he
used to call his "soirees toutes familiales et artistiques." The artists
and intellectuals of my generation--the generation that received and
went down before the terrific impact of Dostoievskyism--pursued the
simple and unsophisticated at least as earnestly as any follower of an
earlier Rousseau. Whatever the real differences between a noble savage
and an unspoilt artisan may be, the difference between the ideas of them
with which a jaded society diverts itself is negligible. "Il nous faut
les barbares," said Gide. Well, we have got them. [H] And, maybe, the
next generation but one will make as much fuss about a new Matthew
Arnold as we made about Marguerite Audoux.

[Footnote H: This essay was written a few weeks after the signing of the
Armistice.]

Meanwhile the _douanier_ came at the right moment. His "soirees toutes
familiales et artistiques" were crowded with admirers--Picasso,
Delaunay, Duhamel, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jules Romain, Max Jacob, Rene
Arcos, Braque, Andre Salmon, Soffici, Blanche Albane, Marie Laurencin,
elegant and eminent people from North and South America, Russia,
Germany, and Scandinavia, to say nothing of his pupils (he professed
both painting and music) and "les demoiselles de son quartier." The
entertainment consisted, if I may trust an ear-witness, of a little bad
music worse played, a little declamation, a glass of wine, and democracy
untainted with the least suspicion of snobbery. There was a delicious
absence of culture, on the one hand, and of romantic squalor on
the other. The whole thing was solidly and sympathetically lower
middle-class. The "soiree tant familiale qu'artistique" closed with a
performance of the Marseillaise; and the intelligentsia retired to bed
feeling that life was full of beauty and significance.

[Illustration: MATISSE (_Photo: E. Druet_)]

CEZANNE [I].

[Footnote I: _Paul Cezanne_. Par Ambroise Vollard. (Paris: Cres. 4fr.
75.)]

It was the opini