There are also hints that Greuze was sometimes jealous. In _Un Homme d'Autrefois_, by the Marquis Costa de Beauregard, it has been narrated that Henry Costa, one of the author's ancestors, wishing to be an artist, went at the age of fourteen years to Paris. He was received with great kindness by Greuze, and the enthusiastic boy said "_il parle comme un ange_," but in an article contributed by Augustus Mansion to _Temple Bay_ we have read, "Another chagrin followed. Greuze became jealous of his prodigy, tried to shake him off, ignored letters, and declined to permit himself to be seen at work. It was an unkindness keenly felt by the boy, who was learning every day a little more of the world: '_Quelle froideur et quelle mystère!_' he says. 'Greuze told me he could not communicate certain processes he was employing, that what was useful for him might not be the same for me. I cannot understand how a fine genius can be capable of such meanness.'" Yet one cannot estimate the whole character of Greuze by these isolated incidents. Like other people, he said and did different things when he was in different moods, and we know that when the artists of Paris held aloof from Prudhon, whose poverty had compelled him to "draw vignettes on letter sheets for the {29} government offices, business cards for tradesmen, and even little pictures for bon-bonnières... Greuze alone treated him amicably." Greuze's industry was abnormal. As a worker he seemed indefatigable. He was absorbed in his art, putting all his soul and brains into his pictures, and seeming to live for his work, and for no other thing. {30} CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS WORK There is so little variety in the works of Greuze that if one divides them into two main classes, nearly all his pictures, with the exception of the portraits, may be placed in one or other of these two divisions. In one class there are his _genre_ pictures, containing as a rule many figures; and then, better known than these, and of greater merit, are his single heads of girls and boys, which constitute the other principal category. His first great success was achieved with his picture of the _genre_ class, _Un Père de Famille qui lit la Bible à ses Enfants_, and this book contains an illustration from another popular work of this sort called _L'Accordée de Village_. A section of this volume explains the relative position of Greuze in the history of art, and reasons are given which account for the great acclamation with which this and similar works were received in Paris when first they were exhibited. Meanwhile we will consider the intrinsic merits of these pictures without reference to the novelty of their appearance--an appearance in which a number of adventitious circumstances are involved. [Illustration: THE VILLAGE BRIDE. (L'Accordée de Village.)] {31}