storm and flood, lie exposed to view; and deep vistas are given of
shadowy glade and swift-running mountain torrent. All is somber,
terrible, and tells of forces that tossed these mountain-tops like bowls,
and of a Power immense, immeasurable, incomprehensible, eternal in the
heavens.

Dore's first exhibition in the Salon was made when he was eighteen, and a
few years later, when he was presented with the Cross of the Legion of
Honor, the decoration made his work exempt from jury examination. And so
every year he sent some large painting to the Salon.

His work was the wonder of Paris, and on every hand his illustrations
were in demand, but his canvases were too large in size and too terrible
in subject to fit private residences.

Patrons were cautious.

To own a "Dore" was proof of a high appreciation of art, or else a lack
of it--buyers did not know which.

They were afraid of being laughed at.

His competitors began to hoot and jeer. Not being able to make pictures
that would compete with his, they wrote him down in the magazines.

His name became a jest.

Various of his illustrations for the Bible were enlarged into immense
canvases, some of which were twenty feet long and twelve feet high. All
who looked upon these pictures were amazed by the fecundity in invention