"You are in love?" said Girodet.

They both knew that the finest portraits by Titian, Raphael, and
Leonardo da Vinci, were the outcome of the enthusiastic sentiments by
which, indeed, under various conditions, every masterpiece is
engendered. The artist only bent his head in reply.

"How happy are you to be able to be in love, here, after coming back
from Italy! But I do not advise you to send such works as these to the
Salon," the great painter went on. "You see, these two works will not
be appreciated. Such true coloring, such prodigious work, cannot yet
be understood; the public is not accustomed to such depths. The
pictures we paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens. We should do
better to turn rhymes, and translate the antique poets! There is more
glory to be looked for there than from our luckless canvases!"

Notwithstanding this charitable advice, the two pictures were
exhibited. The _Interior_ made a revolution in painting. It gave birth
to the pictures of genre which pour into all our exhibitions in such
prodigious quantity that they might be supposed to be produced by
machinery. As to the portrait, few artists have forgotten that
lifelike work; and the public, which as a body is sometimes
discerning, awarded it the crown which Girodet himself had hung over
it. The two pictures were surrounded by a vast throng. They fought for
places, as women say. Speculators and moneyed men would have covered
the canvas with double napoleons, but the artist obstinately refused
to sell or to make replicas. An enormous sum was offered him for the
right of engraving them, and the print-sellers were not more favored
than the amateurs.