We need not, in these pages, discuss Greuze's art; but we may recall its best feature. Though his manner sometimes lays him open to the charge of being merely pretty and graceful, to the exclusion of greater qualities, we must not forget that he was one of the first who brought men back to nature--at a time when nature was everywhere forgotten--and reminded them, beautifully, that the simple incidents of village life, the small joys and sorrows that swell the breast of the rustic maid over the broken jug, or the welcome home of her lover, are not less elementally joyful or tragic, not less worthy the attention and sympathy of the true artist, than scenes of court and throne, and kindred emotions that, by the caprice of chance, swell the breasts of kings and decide the destinies of nations. The idyllic and pastoral effects of Greuze's art, harmonize well with the unpretentiousness of the town of Tournus, and also with one of its most delightful features, the meadow-walks that border the Saône. Here, at sunset, when you have gazed your fill at the mysterious towers of the abbey, rising above the roofs of the town, you may turn to watch the opalesque lights in the quivering water, that, doubling in its mirror the line of distant poplars, slides between reedy banks, between wide stretches of green pasture, where the pale herds browse. Scarcely a sound breaks the stillness; only, from time to time, comes the chance cry of a roystering Sunday youth, from a meadow far away floats the lowing of distant cattle, from the path the heavy tramp of an aged peasant, homeward-bound, bending beneath the weight of his spade. [Illustration: ·TOURNUS·Evening] From the river, where, all day long, around idle punts, tempting baits have been dipping and dropping, comes the flop of a lazy fish, making rings that widen over the glassy surface. Now a distant throb is heard, that deepens, as a tug, gaudily painted in red and black, with white bows, comes gliding down the river, drawing four barges laden with barrels. The second steamer, reversed in the water beneath, is hardly less vivid to the eye. Swish! Swish! Swish! The water foams from the flat prow; all the river is decked with dancing, rainbow ripples, azure blue below, rose pink above, singing, bubbling, racing one another in music to the shore. This pastoral, green plain of the Saône, these luscious meadows of waterish Burgundy, have often recalled to me Phaedra's longing words, in those last days, when the burden of her life and love was more than she could bear. "Oh, for a deep and dewy spring, With runlets cold to draw and drink! And a great meadow blossoming, Long grassed, and poplars in a ring, To rest me by the brink."[135]