Then comes Fernand Cormon's _Flight of Cain_, suggested by Victor Hugo's lines:
Lorsqu' avec ses enfants couverts de peaux de bêtes, Échevelé, livide au milieu des tempêtes, Caïn se fut enfui de devant Jéhovah.
This canvas is one of the largest in the Salon--4 by 7 mètres. The chief figures are grandly painted and the whole picture is very impressive.
Alphonse Alexis Morot's _Good Samaritan_ is an exceedingly strong picture. The Samaritan is represented holding upon his own beast the poor maltreated Jew and walking by his side. The figure-painting is wonderful in its vigor and _verve_.
The fourth picture is Alexandre Cabanel's _Phèdre_. The source of the artist's inspiration was the well-known passage from Euripides: "Consumed upon a bed of grief, Phèdre shuts herself up in her palace, and with a thin veil envelops her blonde head. It is now the third day that her body has partaken of no nourishment: attacked by a concealed ill, she longs to put an end to her sad fate." Phèdre, as she lies wishing only for death as a surcease of sorrow, gazed upon with solicitude by her pitying attendants, is a vivid picture of all-consuming grief. The decorative work of the bed and the wall is chaste and classic.
Of the minor pictures, that of Dagnan-Bouveret, _Un Accident_, is one of the best. It is indeed a rare picture in the excellence of its execution in every detail. A boy has been badly wounded in the wrist by some accident, and the surgeon is engaged in dressing the injured part. The dirty foot of the boy as it peeps out beneath the chair, shod in a rough sabot which fails to conceal its grime, the bowl standing on the table half full of blood and water while the wrist is now being skilfully bandaged by the surgeon, whose operations are watched with great solicitude by the group of sympathetic relatives,--all these features give a living interest to this painting which is unusual. The red, grimy hands of the old mother of the boy are very faithfully painted. The expression on the lad's face of heroic endurance and a determination not to cry in any case is touching.
As for Mademoiselle Sara Bernhardt's _La Jeune Fille et la Mort_--a veiled skeleton coming up behind a young girl and touching her on the shoulder--it would attract little attention if it had not been signed by the flighty (and lately _fleeing_) actress. The verses underneath the picture are the best part of it: