And then, in the words of one of his contemporaries: "The first rays
of fame that caressed him streamed from those admirable and diminutive
drawings for _The Indian Cabin_. He had done much sketching in the
Jardin des Plantes, in the conservatories, where the flora of the
tropics expanded opulently; also, before the windows of those shops of
bric-a-brac, abounding in exotic objects, which in those bygone days
stretched in a row facing the entrance to the Louvre, on the Place du
Carrousel. All that he had to do was to rummage among those sketches
in order to give his composition an inimitable stamp of truth, such as
was seldom attempted by illustrators of his nation. It was a simple
thing to convert into an ornamental letter a storm-broken lily, a
group of Indian weapons, some Javanese musical instruments. If the
text called for the 'emblems of mental toil,' the young artist heaped
his table with volumes bound in parchment or full calf, acquired for
a few sous from the stands along the quays, and he had only to copy,
with all the naïveté of the Primitives, the gleam of the edges, the
bands on the backs, the slips of paper alternating with the silken
bookmarks."
And the critic proceeds to cite an example of that "prodigious finish"
which Théophile Gautier subsequently recognized as the most _popular_
characteristic, so to speak, of his noble talent: "In two of these
miniature vignettes, measuring less than four centimetres, two
engravings can be made out, hanging upon a library wall; one of them
interprets quite scrupulously _The Pariah thinking of the English
Doctor_, and the other _The English Doctor thinking of the Pariah_.
Between these engravings can be made out, hanging on a nail, and
possessing all the characteristics described in the text, _the pipe of
English leather, the mouthpiece of which was of yellow amber, and that
of the Pariah, the stem of which was of bamboo and the bowl of
terra-cotta_."
The success of this _de luxe_ edition was rapid and important. The
first step along the path of glory was taken,--and on that path the
first step costs more than anywhere else. Henceforth, no more need of
soliciting work; far otherwise. The artist still continued to do
illustrating. Mention must be made of the drawings that he did for
_Frenchmen Painted by Themselves_, and later--here ends this chapter
of his artistic career--the plates that served as illustrations for
_The Fallen Angel_, by Lamartine (edition in two volumes, already
unobtainable twenty years ago), and the _Contes Rémois_, by M. de
Chevigné; this last series bears date 1858.