bial, and once Daubigny, on
introducing him to an American picture dealer, warned him not to ask
less than five thousand francs for the first picture he sold to the
man. The American went to Daumier's atelier, and seeing a picture on
the easel, asked, "How much?" The artist, remembering Daubigny's
warning, answered, "Five thousand francs." The dealer immediately
bought it, and on demanding to see something else, Daumier put another
canvas on the easel, far superior to the one sold. The Yankee again
asked the price. The poor artist was perplexed. He had received no
instructions from Daubigny regarding a second sale; so when the
question was repeated he hesitated, and his timidity getting the
better of him, he replied: "Five hundred francs." "Don't want it;
wouldn't take it as a gift," said the dealer. "I like the other
better. Besides, I never sell any but expensive pictures," and he went
away satisfied that a man who sold so cheaply was not much of an
artist. This anecdote, which we heard second hand from Daubigny, may
be a fable, yet it never failed to send Daubigny into fits of
laughter. It may be surmised that, despite his herculean labours,
extending over more than half a century, Daumier never knew how to
make or save money.

He was born at Marseilles in 1808. His father was a third-rate poet
who, suspecting his own gift, doubted the talent of his son, though
this talent was both precocious and prodigious. The usual thing
happened. Daumier would stick at nothing but his drawing; the attempt
to force him into law studies only made him hate the law and lawyers
and that hatred he never ceased to vent in his caricatures. He knocked
about until he learned in 1829 the technics of lithography; then he
soon became self-supporting. His progress was rapid. He illustrated
for the Boulevard journals; he caricatured Louis Philippe and was sent
to jail, Sainte-Pelagie, for six months. Many years afterward he
attacked with a like ferocity Napoleon III.

Look at his frontispiece--rather an advertisement--of Victor Hugo's
Les Chatiments. It is as sinister, as malign as a Rops. The big book,
title displayed, crushes to earth a vulture which is a travesty of the
Napoleonic beak. Daumier was a power in Paris. Albert Wolff, the
critic of _Figaro_, tells how he earned five francs each time he
provided a text for a caricature by Daumier, and Philipon, who founded
several journals, actually claimed a share in Daumier's success
because