Twenty years ago Manet's name was a folly and a byword in the Parisian
studios. The students of the Beaux Arts used to stand before his salon
pictures and sincerely wonder how any one could paint like that; the
students were quite sure that it was done for a joke, to attract
attention; and then, not quite sincerely, one would say, "But I'll
undertake to paint you three pictures a week like that." I say that
the remark was never quite sincere, for I never heard it made without
some one answering, "I don't think you could; just come and look at it
again--there's more in it than you think." No doubt we thought Manet
very absurd, but there was always something forced and artificial in
our laughter and the ridicule we heaped upon him.

But about that time my opinions were changing; and it was a great
event in my life when Manet spoke to me in the cafe of the Nouvelle
Athene. I knew it was Manet, he had been pointed out to me, and I had
admired the finely-cut face from whose prominent chin a closely-cut
blonde beard came forward; and the aquiline nose, the clear grey eyes,
the decisive voice, the remarkable comeliness of the well-knit figure,
scrupulously but simply dressed, represented a personality curiously
sympathetic. On several occasions shyness had compelled me to abandon
my determination to speak to him. But once he had spoken I entered
eagerly into conversation, and next day I went to his studio. It was
quite a simple place. Manet expended his aestheticism on his canvases,
and not upon tapestries and inlaid cabinets. There was very little in
his studio except his pictures: a sofa, a rocking-chair, a table for
his paints, and a marble table on iron supports, such as one sees in
cafes. Being a fresh-complexioned, fair-haired young man, the type
most suitable to Manet's palette, he at once asked me to sit. His
first intention was to paint me in a cafe; he had met me in a cafe,
and he thought he could realise his impression of me in the first