Utterly crushed at first by the sense of loneliness and desolation his
loss had created, Edmond de Goncourt was long entirely absorbed in
memories of the departed. The spiritual presence of Jules filled the
house with its mute and mournful sentiment. The heart-broken survivor
could find consolation and relief for his pain only in friendship.
Théophile Gautier, Paul de Saint-Victor, Jules Vallès, the painter De
Nittis, Burty, Flaubert, Renan, Taine, and Théodore de Banville
sustained him with their affection. A band of ardent, active, and
audacious young men, among whom M. Émile Zola was specially
distinguished by the research of his formulæ, began to link him with
Flaubert, offering them a common worship. Alphonse Daudet (we have now
come to the year 1879) sketched the most faithful portrait of him to
whom a whole generation was soon to give the respectful title of "the
Marshal of Letters": "Edmond de Goncourt looks about fifty. His hair is
gray, a light steel gray; his air is distinguished and genial; he has a
tall, straight figure, and the sharp nose of the sporting dog, like a
country gentleman keen for the chase, and, on his pale and energetic
face, a smile of perpetual sadness, a glance that sometimes kindles,
sharp as the graver's needle. What determination in that glance, what
pain in that smile!" Many artists attempted to fix that glance and that
smile with pencil or burin, but how few were successful!
[Illustration: EDMOND DE GONCOURT.
By Eugène Carrière.