I knew a sportsman who, having been crossed in love, devoted his life to the study of certain minerals, and a gentleman, otherwise sane, who decorated his house from roof to cellar, with the shells of the oysters he had eaten and the corks of the champagne bottles he had emptied, after having scrupulously inscribed on these gastronomic mementoes the dates of the merry feasts they recalled to him!
Three men stand out from this mixed crowd of acquaintances as my faithful and trusted friends--three men wonderfully gifted and yet wonderfully modest, three men with golden hearts and lofty minds: Bonnat, the painter; Massenet, the composer; and Coppée, the poet.
I knew Bonnat for nearly twenty years. He used to sign his letters to me "your old and devoted grand-father," or, more briefly, "Your... Methuselah." The great painter to whom the world owes amongst other masterpieces a powerful "Saint Vincent de Paul," and those gems of psychology, the "Portrait of Renan," and the "Portrait of My Mother," loved classic music, and what is better, understood it. During the twenty years of our friendship only a few times did he fail to attend the concerts given at my house. Like my father he had a special weakness for classic music, and I believe he would have loved to listen to Beethoven's Septett every day of his life. It was M. B., the Attorney-General, who first introduced him to me. I called on M. Bonnat at his house, which had been built by Bernier, the architect of the Opera Comique. On the ground floor were the apartments of his sister and his mother. A monumental staircase decorated with frescoes painted by Puvis de Chavannes led to the artist's rooms, and above, to the studio crowded with old carved wood, magnificent bronzes by Barye, and a number of fine paintings--including one by his beloved Botticelli--on the walls.
Bonnat--above all a portrait painter--had a curious way of working. He hardly worked at his model--directly. He preferred to watch him, or her, in a round hand-mirror which he held in his left hand--the hand which also held the palette. At the back of the studio stood a small cheval-glass, placed in such a position that it reflected the portrait. He watched both images, and... worked. Another curious method of his was to turn the canvas when he retouched this or that detail.