Camille went to the high school in Rouen, and was then destined, according to the wish of his father, to adopt some serious calling "by which money was to be made." He began his career with a yard-measure in a linen-draper's establishment, ran through the suburbs of Paris with a book of patterns under his arm selling cloth--_Couleur olive_--and in his absence of mind made the clumsiest mistakes. After eight years of opposition his father consented to his becoming a painter. "You will have a yearly allowance of twelve hundred francs," said old Corot, "and if you can live on that you may do as you please." At the Pont Royal, behind his father's house, he painted his first picture, amid the tittering of the little dressmaker's apprentices who looked on with curiosity from the window, but one of whom, Mademoiselle Rose, remained his dear friend through life. This was in 1823, and twenty years went by before he returned to French soil in the pictures that he painted. Victor Bertin became his teacher; in other words, Classicism, style, and coldness. He sought diligently to do as others; he drew studies, composed historical landscapes, and painted as he saw the academicians painting around him. To conclude his orthodox course of training it only remained for him to make the pilgrimage to Italy, where Claude Lorrain had once painted and Poussin had invented the historical landscape. In 1825--when he was twenty-eight--he set out with Bertin and Aligny, remained long in Rome, and came to Naples. The Classicists, whose circle he entered with submissive veneration, welcomed him for his cheerful, even temper and the pretty songs which he sang in fine tenor voice. Early every morning he went into the Campagna, with a colour-box under his arm and a sentimental ditty on his lips, and there he drew the ruins with an architectural severity, just like Poussin. In 1827, after a sojourn of two years and a half in Italy, he was able to make an appearance in the Salon with his carefully balanced landscapes. In 1835 and 1843 he stayed again in Italy, and only after this third pilgrimage were his eyes opened to the charms of French landscape. [Illustration: _L'Art._ THE BRIDGE AT L'ISLE-ADAM.]