Many years, however, Corot was to wait before the memorable day when he bewailed that his complete collection of works had been spoiled, he having sold a picture. Living on his modest income, which his father doubled when, in 1846, the son was given the cross of the Legion of Honor, he was happy with his two loves, nature and painting. Little by little he gained a reputation among the artists, especially when, after 1835, on his return from a second voyage to Italy, he found that the true country of the artist is his native country. After that period his works are nearly all French in subject, many of them painted in the environs of Paris; though, with his Theocritan spirit, he could see the fountain of Jouvence in the woods of Sèvres, and for him the classic nymph dwelt by the pond at Ville d'Avray. His life was long--he died February 22, 1875--and completely filled with his work. After Corot's death, there was exhibited at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris a collection of several hundred of his pictures, and then, perhaps for the first time, the genius of the man was profoundly felt. To those who were inclined to undervalue the pure, sweet spirit which shone through his work, and to complain of the representation of a world in which no breeze stronger than a zephyr blew, in which the birds always sang, and the shepherd piped to a flock unconscious of the existence of wolves, there were shown efforts in so many and various directions as to forever silence their reproach of monotony, so often directed against Corot's work. There were landscapes, showing the gradual emancipation, due to the most sincere study of nature, hard and precise, in the early period; vaporous and filled with suggestion, as the sentiment of the day and hour represented became important to the painter, and his technical mastery became more certain in later years. There were figures, none too well drawn from the point of view of David or Ingres, but serving, to a painter whose interest in atmospheric problems never ceased, as objects around which the luminous light of day played, and which were bathed in circumambient air. [Illustration: EARLY MORNING. JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT. From a painting now in the Louvre. One of the best known of the works of the master, executed during the transitional period, when he still gave great attention to detail. The original is remarkable for its sense of dewy freshness.] [Illustration: DIANA'S BATH. JEAN BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT. From a painting in the Museum at Bordeaux.] [Illustration: A SHALLOW RIVER. FROM A PAINTING BY THÉODORE ROUSSEAU.]