Very celebrated at the time were the companion pictures, “L’Enfant envoyé en Nourrice” and “Le Retour de Nourrice.” The first scene is laid in the quaint courtyard of a little thatched farm, with all the family clustering round the mule on which the foster-mother is to carry away the baby. The composition is charming, with the foster-father arranging the saddle, the grandmother giving a last word of advice to the young nurse, the two little children afraid of the strange dog, and the mother giving a last kiss to the baby she would give much not to have to part with. The return of the baby, now a sturdy child on his feet, is set in the interior, where the little hero of the occasion struggles away from his eager mother and the brother who strives to amuse him, to return to the foster-mother. These are the least affected of all the subject-pictures. With the exception of the foster-father, who stands in the second one with a cradle on his back and his eyes piously uplifted to the rafters, all the actors seem absorbed in what they are doing, and this sincerity accentuates the grace and sentiment which always informs Greuze’s work. Engravings of all these canvases, of all his work, were sent out in their thousands. He was well known in Germany and other countries, and his name was almost as familiar in the bourgeois homes of provincial France as in Paris. Seeing him at this period of his career, the pet of princes, and earning vast sums of money, it is difficult to realise Greuze could ever have fallen on evil days, have come to actual want. Yet so it was to be. The visit of the Emperor Joseph II. referred to by Madame Roland, and followed by a command for a picture, a present of 4000 ducats, and the conferring of the title of baron on the painter, was the high-water mark in his career. And the tide of success was not only to turn, but to recede with tragic rapidity. [Illustration: PLATE VII.--LA CRUCHE CASSÉE “La Cruche Cassée,” or “The Broken Pitcher,” is too well known in every form of reproduction to need description. It hangs in the Louvre, and is always surrounded by eager copyists, who strive, very frequently in vain, to reproduce the delicate tints of the flesh and the vague, wondering expression in the eyes of the charming heroine.] CHAPTER VII RUIN AND DEATH Even during these brilliant days, when Greuze was considered the most fortunate of mortals, there lurked beneath the glittering surface of his life a grim reality which made happiness impossible, the misery of a private life dominated by as bad a wife as ever cursed a man’s existence.