Bastien Lepage

There are certain beings who bear the stamp of the divine seal and are preordained to receive the highest favours within the gift of glory; they are fated to pass through life like those brilliant meteors which are seen to flash across the heavens and disappear in the same instant. Bastien-Lepage was one of these meteors. But while the others leave behind them only a luminous trail[Pg 12] that swiftly vanishes, this rare artist, snatched so prematurely from the field of art, traced his passage in a furrow of dazzling splendour, the radiance of which has not even yet begun to fade.