The first
innkeeper of the place and his wife, whose hyphenated name,
Luniot-Ganne, commemorated their union, kept for many years on the
walls, the panels of the doors, and on odd cabinets and bits of
furniture, _souvenirs_ of the passage of all these men, in the shape
of sketches made by their hands. This little museum, created in
sportive mood, bore all these names and many more, those of men, often
celebrated, who from sympathy or curiosity visited the place. Millet
was in life, as in art, somewhat apart in the later years; but he was
the consistent friend of Rousseau, whose life closed in the darkness
of a disordered mind.
[Illustration: "THE MAN WITH THE LEATHERN BELT." PORTRAIT OF GUSTAVE
COURBET AS A YOUNG MAN, BY HIMSELF.
From the original, in the Louvre.]
Narcisco Virgilio Diaz de la Pena was the noble name of him who, born
at Bordeaux in 1807, the son of a Spanish refugee, died at Mentone,
November 18, 1876. Left an orphan when very young, he drifted to
Paris, and found work, painting on china, in the manufactory at
Sevres. Here he met Dupre, employed like himself; and in their work in
other fields it is not fanciful to feel the influence of the delight
in rich translucent color, of the tones employed with over-emphasis
on the surface of _faience_. After a bitter acquaintance with poverty,
Diaz produced work which brought him great popularity.
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