Madame Morizot exhibited a series of delicate fancies. Here are two
young girls, the sweet atmosphere folds them as with a veil, they are
all summer, their dreams are limitless, their days are fading, and their
ideas follow the flight of the white butterflies through the standard
roses. Take note, too, of the stand of fans; what delicious fancies are
there--willows, balconies, gardens, and terraces.

Then, contrasting with these distant tendernesses, there was the
vigorous painting of Guillaumin. There life is rendered in violent and
colourful brutality. The ladies fishing in the park, with the violet of
the skies and the green of the trees descending upon them, is a _chef
d'œuvre._ Nature seems to be closing about them like a tomb; and that
hillside,--sunset flooding the skies with yellow and the earth with blue
shadow,--is another piece of painting that will one day find a place in
one of the public galleries; and the same can be said of the portrait of
the woman on a background of chintz flowers.

We could but utter coarse gibes and exclaim, "What could have induced
him to paint such things? surely he must have seen that it was absurd. I
wonder if the Impressionists are in earnest or if it is only _une blague
qu'on nous fait_?" Then we stood and screamed at Monet, that most
exquisite painter of blonde light. We stood before the "Turkeys," and
seriously we wondered if "it was serious work,"--that _chef d'œuvre_!
the high grass that the turkeys are gobbling is flooded with sunlight so
swift and intense that for a moment the illusion is complete. "Just look
at the house! why, the turkeys couldn't walk in at the door. The
perspective is all wrong." Then followed other remarks of an educational
kind; and when we came to those piercingly personal visions of railway
stations by the same painter,--those rapid sensations of steel and
vapour,--our laughter knew no bounds. "I say, Marshall, just look at