Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/134

 286 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS to Egypt for the first time ; since then he has more than once visited it, but it is doubtful if he could renew the pleasure of his youthful experience. " I set out," he says, " with my friends, I the fifth, all of us lightly furnished with money, but full of youthful enthusiasm. Life was then easy in Egypt ; we lived at a very moderate rate ; we hired a boat and lived four months upon the Nile, hunting, painting, fishing by turns, from Damietta to Phike. We returned to Cairo and remained there four months longer in a house in the older part of the town, be- longing to Soleman Pasha. As Frenchmen, he treated us with cordial hospital- ity. Happy period of youth, of freedom from care ! Hope and the future opened bright before us ; the sky was blue ! " G£rdme's pictures of Eastern life make a gallery by themselves. A few of them are historic, such as his " Cleopatra visiting Caesar," but the most of them are simply scenes and incidents drawn from the daily life of the modern inhabi- tants of Cairo and the desert, illustrating their manners and customs. The mere titles would fill up a large part of our space. Many of the best of them are owned in this country, and all have been reproduced by engraving or by photog- raphy. In another field GeYdme won great distinction, painting scenes from the his- tory of France in the reign of Louis XIV. ; subjects drawn from what may be called the high comedy of court-life, and treated by G£rdme with remarkable re- finement and distinction. Among these pictures the best known are: "Moliere Breakfasting with Louis XIV.," illustrating the story of the king's rebuke to his courtiers who affected to despise the man of genius ; " Pere Joseph," the priest who under the guise of humility and self-abnegation reduces the greatest nobles to the state of lackeys ; " Louis XIV. Receiving the Great CondeY' and "Collab- oration," two poets of Louis XI V.'s time working together over a play. Among his accomplishments as an artist we must not forget the talent that Gerome has shown as a sculptor. He has modelled several figures from his own pictures, with such admirable skill as to prove that he might easily have made sculpture a pro- fession had he not chosen to devote himself to painting. {^-zrTt '<r