human
Take pity on this youngster, who has been married for the last three years, and who, were he to come under some low fellow's influence, might easily fall into the most terrible abyss ; so ran the letter, which a certain Baron Joursanvault had given him. He hired himself a room in the house of M. Fauconnier, the head of a firm engaged in the lace trade, who lived in the Rue du Bac with his wife and a pretty sister. The latter, Marie, was eighteen years of age, and, like Werther's Lotte, was always surrounded by her brother's children, whom she looked after like a little housewife. Prudhon, himself young, sensitive, and handsome, loved and was loved, and made her presents of small flattering portraits and pretty allegorical drawings, in which Cupid was represented scratching the initials M. F. (Marie Fauconnier) on the wall with his arrow. That he was married and several times a father she never knew, till one day Madame Prudhon arrived with the children.
gpt
And you never told me!
human
Cupid, a delicious little sketch, and with the same pencil that drew it he has written down the names of the pictures he purposes painting later on:
gpt
Love,
human
Frivolity,
gpt
Cupid and Psyche. It is as it were the secret confession of his fantasy, a preliminary announcement of his future works. Here and there are found sketches hastily dashed off of beautiful female forms in the graceful attitude which had excited his admiration in the women of the
human
Aldobrandini Wedding. But, above all, the young artist observed all that was around him. He lived in unceasing intercourse with the beautiful, and his soul was nurtured by the spirit of the works which surrounded him. He accumulated pictures, not in his sketch-book, but in himself; so much so that, when he was afterwards interrogated as to his Italian studies, his only answer was:
gpt
I did nothing but study life and admire the works of the masters.