of a moody young fellow who long assisted Manet in his studio,
preparing his palette, cleaning his brushes, and so forth. This lad,
whom Manet painted in _L'Enfant aux Cerises_ ('The Boy with the
Cherries'), had artistic aspirations of his own and, being unable to
justify them, ended by hanging himself.

I had just a slight acquaintance with Manet, whose studio I first
visited early in my youth, and though the exigencies of life led me
long ago to cast aside all artistic ambition of my own, I have been
for more than thirty years on friendly terms with members of the
French art world. Thus it would be comparatively easy for me to
identify a large number of the characters and the incidents figuring
in 'His Masterpiece'; but I doubt if such identification would have
any particular interest for English readers. I will just mention that
Mahoudeau, the sculptor, is, in a measure, Solari, another friend of
M. Zola's boyhood and youth; that Fagerolles, in his main features, is
Gervex; and that Bongrand is a commingling of Courbet, Cabanel and
Gustave Flaubert. For instance, his so-called 'Village Wedding' is
suggested by Courbet's 'Funeral at Ornans'; his friendship for Claude
is Cabanel's friendship for Manet; whilst some of his mannerisms, such
as his dislike for the praise accorded to certain of his works, are
simply those of Flaubert, who (like Balzac in the case of _Eugenie
Grandet_) almost invariably lost his temper if one ventured to extol
_Madame Bovary_ in his presence. Courbet, by the way, so far as
disposition goes, crops up again in M. Zola's pages in the person of
Champbouvard, a sculptor, who, artistically, is a presentment of
Clesinger.

I now come to a personage of a very different character, Pierre
Sandoz, clerk, journalist, and novelist; and Sandoz, it may be frankly