conscious, as such a man must be, of his importance, was the simplest of
men. In appearance the portrait published here gives him in his youth.
At the time of which I speak he was heavier, with a firm nose, eyes
that, deeply set, seemed to look inwards, except, when directly
addressing one, there was a sudden gleam. His manner of speech was slow
and measured, perhaps out of kindness to the stranger, though I am
inclined to think that it was rather the speech of one who arrays his
thoughts beforehand, and produces them in orderly sequence. In dress he
was like the ordinary _bourgeois_ in the country, wearing generally
a woven coat like a cardigan jacket in the studio, at the door of which
he would leave his _sabots_ and wear the felt slippers, or
_chaussons_, which are worn with the wooden shoes. This was not the
affectation of remaining a peasant; every one in the country in France
wears _sabots_, and very comfortable they are.

One more visit stands out prominently in my memory. It came about in
this wise. In the summer of 1874 the "two Stevensons," as they were
known, the cousins Robert Louis and Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (the
author of the recent "Life of Velasquez," and the well-known writer on
art), were in Barbizon. It fell that the cousins, in pessimistic vein,
were decrying modern art--the great men were all dead; we should never
see their like again; in short, the mood in which we all fall at times
was dominant. As in duty bound, I argued the cause of the present and
future, and as a clinching argument told them that I had it in my power
to convince them that at least one of the greatest painters of all time
was still busy in the practice of his art. Millet was not much more than
a name to my friends, and I am certain that that day when we talked over
our coffee in the garden of Siron's inn, they had seen little or none of
his work. I ventured across the road, knocked at the little green door,
and asked permission to bring my friends, which was accorded for the