I may take it," he went on, "that
such a question will be raised one day after my death, perhaps many
years after I am gone. If you are alive you will, by my will, raise your
voice against the project. I have painted my own portrait; while I am
here, I will take care that it be not reproduced; I will forbid them to
do so after I am at rest. There shall not be a bust on my tomb."

About a fortnight before his death he made a will to that effect, and up
to the present hour (1883) its injunctions have been respected.
Delacroix lies in a somewhat solitary spot in Pere-Lachaise. Neither
emblem, bust, nor statue adorns his tomb, which was executed according
to his own instructions. "They libelled me so much during my life," he
said one day, "that I do not want them to libel me after my death, on
canvas or in marble. They flattered me so much afterwards, that I knew
their flattery to be fulsome, and, if anything, I am more afraid of it
than of their libels."

It would be difficult to find a greater contrast than there existed
between Eugene Delacroix, both as a man and an artist, and Horace
Vernet. The one loved his art with the passionate devotion of an
intensely poetical lover for his wayward mistress, whom to cease wooing
for a moment might mean an irreparable breach or, at least, a long
estrangement; the other loved his with the calm affection of the
cherished husband for the faithful wife who had blessed him with a
numerous offspring, whom he had known from his very infancy, a marriage
with whom had been decided upon when he was a mere lad, whom he might
even neglect for a little while without the bond being in any way
relaxed. According to their respective certificates of birth, Vernet was
the senior by ten years of Delacroix. When I first knew them, about
1840, Vernet looked ten years younger than Delacroix. If they had chosen
to disguise themselves as musketeers of the Louis XIII. period, Vernet
would have reminded one of both Aramis and d'Artagnan; Delacroix, of
Athos.

Montaigne spoke Latin before he could speak French; Vernet drew men and
horses before he had mastered either French or Latin. His playthings
were stumpy, worn-out brushes, discarded palettes, and sticks of
charcoal; his alphabet, the pictures of the Louvre, where his father
occupied a set of apartments, and where he was born, a month before the
outbreak of the first Revolution. He once said to me, "Je suis peintre
comme il y des hommes qui sont roi