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Flaubert himself, in his _Salambo_, was to some extent carried away by the stream. Consider, for instance, the descriptions of Gisko crawling, a maimed, shapeless stump, out of the ditch into Matho's tent, and of how his head is sawn off; of the tortures inflicted by the Carthaginian people upon the captured Matho; or of how the mercenaries are starved to death in the rocky valley where they were imprisoned. Vying with this tendency of literature, painting attained in its chosen themes an over-excitation which reached the limits of the possible. While Delaroche had only in a very timid manner led the way to the tragedies of history, the younger artists hunted up all the most horrible deeds of blood to be found in the great Book of Martyrs of the story of man, and elaborated them on gigantic canvases. It would be quite impossible to draw up a catalogue of all the murders at that time perpetrated by French art. They might be arranged under various headings, as biblical, historical, political murders; murders in connection with robbery, and murders arising out of revenge; with subdivisions corresponding to the means employed, as poison, the dagger, the halter, broadsword and rapier, the bowstring, strangling, burning, etc. This was the time when, on account of this dominance of the
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Fall of Sodom with a dozen copper-coloured Abyssinians, larger than life, rolling on the ground in convulsions, while Lot's wife, dying and half-consumed by fire, gnashes her teeth as she raises the corpse of her child over her head. In a picture of _George Becker's_ were represented the corpses of King Saul's sons, delivered over by David to the Gibeonites, hanging alongside of each other in a dark forest scene on a cross-shaped framework, like butcher's meat from the shambles. Their mother stands beneath the scaffold, swinging a knotted club to protect the corpses from an antediluvian vulture. In a painting by _Bréhan_, Cyaxares, King of the Medes, gives a banquet, and by way of dessert has his guests the Scythian leaders massacred by his mercenaries. In one by _Matthieu_, Heliogabalus has hit upon a yet happier idea, for at the conclusion of the meal he sets half-starved lions and tigers upon his guests. _Aimé Morot_ depicted in a large picture
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The Wives of the Ambrones in the battle of Aquæ Sextiæ. They are hurling themselves like a horde of furies upon the Roman horsemen who are attacking the camp. Half-naked, or entirely so, with their hair flowing behind them, they throw themselves upon the Romans, catch hold of the swords by the blade, tear their eyes out, and are trampled beneath the horses' hoofs. Especially popular were the voluptuous and cruel wild beasts from the menagerie of the Cæsars. Nero in particular suited the atmosphere of the period; his ghost haunted the novel, the stage, sculpture, and painting, and there seemed to be a general agreement to immortalise him and the morally monstrous personality of Locusta. In a picture by _Sylvestre_ he is represented with florid cheeks, glowing with fat, and gloating over the mortal agony of a slave lying on the ground, upon whom Locusta has tested the poison intended for Britannicus. _Aublet_ varied the same theme by making a negro lad the victim, while several corpses of negroes lying in the background suggest that the Emperor was not quite satisfied with Locusta's first experiments. Round Nero, the more entirely to fill his magnificent Golden House, the charming shades of his congenial comrades in crime weave their flitting dances. _Pelez_ depicted the strangling of the Emperor Commodus by the gladiator to whom the Empress had entrusted the task, and painted with tender interest the marks caused by suffusion of blood which the athlete's hand had left upon the unhappy prince's neck. A very familiar figure is that of Seneca, with distorted features, uttering his last words of wisdom while the blood pours from his opened veins. After the madness of the Cæsars comes the atrocious history of the Merovingian kings. _Luminais_, the painter of Gauls and barbarians, represented in his large picture
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Les Énervés de Jumièges