AS COMMISSIONER AT PARIS-1878 513 



fer to paper. Sometimes he used a pencil, sometimes, a 

 quill pen, and not infrequently he would plunge the fea 

 ther end of the quill into his inkstand and rapidly put 

 into his work broader and blacker strokes. As soon as 

 he had finished a drawing he generally tore it into bits 

 and threw them upon the floor, but occasionally he would 

 fold the sketches carefully and put them into his pocket. 

 This being the case, no one dared ask him for one of them. 



But one morning his paper gave out, and for lack of it 

 he took up a boxwood paper-knife lying near and began 

 work on it. First he decorated the handle in a sort of 

 rococo way, and then dashed off on the blade, with his pen, 

 a very spirited head a bourgeois physiognomy some 

 what in Gavarni s manner. But as he could not tear the 

 paper-knife into bits, and did not care to take it away, he 

 left it upon the table. This was my chance. Immediately 

 after the session I asked the director-general to allow me 

 to carry it off as a souvenir ; he assented heartily, and so 

 I possess a picture which I saw begun, continued, and 

 ended by one of the greatest of French painters. 



At my left was Tresca, director of the French National 

 Conservatory of Arts and Trades; and next him, the 

 sphinx of the committee the most silent man I ever saw, 

 the rector of the Portuguese University of Coimbra. Dur 

 ing the three months of our session no one of us ever 

 heard him utter a word. Opposite was Jules Simon, emi 

 nent as an orator, philosopher, scholar, and man of letters ; 

 an academician who had held positions in various cab 

 inets, and had even been prime minister of the republic. 

 On one side of him was Tullo Massarani, a senator of the 

 Italian kingdom, eminent as a writer on the philosophy of 

 art ; on the other, Boussingault, one of the foremost chem 

 ists of the century ; and near him, Wischniegradsky, direc 

 tor of the Imperial Technical Institute at Moscow, whom I 

 afterward came to know as minister of finance at St. 

 Petersburg. Each afternoon we devoted to examining the 

 greater exhibits which were to come before us in compe 

 tition for the grands prix on the following morning. 



I. 33 



