letters, indulged in similar boasts, and no doubt in their poverty and
tribulations the oriflamme of aristocracy which they bravely bore into
the café life of Paris was a source of consolation to them. But it is
with brains, not blood, that painters mix their pigments, and the
legend of high birth can go with the other fictions reported by Henley
that Monticelli was an illegitimate offshoot of the Gonzagas; that he
was the natural son of Diaz; that Diaz kept him a prisoner for years,
to "steal the secret of his colours."

Like many another of his temperament, he had himself to thank for his
woes, though it was a streak of ill-luck for him when the Prussians
bore down on Paris. He was beginning to be known. A pupil of Raymond
Aubert (1781-1857), he was at first a "fanatic of Raphael and Ingres."
Delacroix and his violently harmonised colour masses settled the
future colourist. He met Diaz and they got on very well together. A
Southerner, handsome, passionate, persuasive, dashing, with the
eloquence of the meridional, Monticelli and his musical name made
friends at court and among powerful artists. In 1870 he started on his
walk of thirty-six days from Paris to Marseilles. He literally painted
his way. In every inn he shed masterpieces. Precious gold dripped from
his palette, and throughout the Rhone valley there are, it is
whispered--by white-haired old men the memory of whose significant
phrases awakes one in the middle of the night longing for the valley
of Durance--that if a resolute, keen-eyed adventurer would traverse
unostentatiously the route taken by Monticelli during his Odyssey the
rewards might be great. It is an idea that grips one's imagination,
but unfortunately it is an idea that gripped the imagination of others
thirty years ago. Not an _auberge_, hotel, or hamlet has been left
unexplored. The fine-tooth comb of familiar parlance has been
sedulously used by interested persons. If there are any Monticellis