on to say, that he should be
deprived of the respectable amusements of his age. For his needs and
for his pleasures, he might count upon the sum of six hundred and fifty
francs every three months, which would be given to him in the same place
by the same man; but he was expressly forbidden to follow the messenger
after he had fulfilled his commission; if this injunction were directly
or indirectly disobeyed, the punishment would be severe; it would be
nothing less than the withdrawal of the stipend and, possibly, total
abandonment.

Do you remember, my dear Madame de Camps, that in 1831 you and I went
together to the Beaux-Arts to see the exhibition of works which were
competing for the Grand Prix in sculpture? The subject given out for
competition was Niobe weeping for her children. Do you also remember my
indignation at one of the competing works around which the crowd was so
compact that we could scarcely approach it? The insolent youth had dared
to turn that sacred subject into jest! His Niobe was infinitely touching
in her beauty and grief, but to represent her children, as he did,
by monkeys squirming on the ground in the most varied and grotesque
attitudes, what a deplorable abuse of talent--!

You tried in vain to make me see that the monkeys were enchantingly
graceful and clever, and that a mother's blind idolatry could not be
more ingeniously ridiculed; I held to the opinion that the conception
was monstrous, and the indignation of the old academicians who demanded
the expulsion of this intolerable work, seemed to me most justifiable.
But the Academy, instigated by the public and by the newspapers, which
talked of opening a subscription to send the young sculptor to Rome,
were not of my opinion and that of their older members. The extreme
beauty of the Niobe atoned for all the rest and the defamer of mothers
saw his work crowned, in spite of an admonition given to him by the
venerable secretary on the day of the distribution of the prizes.
But, poor fellow! I excuse him, for I now learn that he never knew his
mother. It was Dorlange, the poor abandoned child at Tours, the friend
of Marie-Gaston.

From 1827 to 1831 the two friends were inseparable. Dorlange, regularly
supplied with means, was a sort of Marquis d'Aligre; Gaston, on the
contrary, was reduced to his own resources for a living, and would have
lived a life of extreme poverty had it not been for his friend. But
where friends love each other--and