Page:The illustrators of Montmartre.pdf/49



twilight, and some deep and placid stream murmuring beneath the darkling trees carries on its bosom a fairy bark and its cargo of love.

Then it is the mysterious hour of moonrise, and in the shadow of the garden wall, which climbs serpent-like up hill and down dale, we shall find our lovers serenely happy, but hushed by the beauty of the waking night.

Frequently Balluriau will carry us back to a century of delicate silks and satins; and in the broad sunlight will show a band of amorous beaux and belles, full of the joie de vivre, and about to start a game of blind man's buff. His figures live within their old-time costumes; he draws handsome men and beautiful women, for the ugly er the grotesque rarely attract him. But he has proved in such charming works as his "Printemps," and many others, that he also finds in the lovers of to-day sufficient beauty to include them in his "répertoire", The embrace of the sentimental young student in the felt hat and caped overcoat, who has just met the darling of his heart in the Bois de Boulogne, is every whit as tender and graceful as is that of the perruqued galant of the eighteenth century, arrayed in pink satins, who, behind a sculptured satyr, has stolen a kiss from his coy and dainty partner in the last minuet on the sward. Look, in his illustration to "Badinage Sentimental," how natural is the whole scene, how easy the pose, and how charming the face of the tittle Parisienne, who