For five-and-twenty years it was permitted to him to labour in perfect ripeness, freedom, and artistic independence. One thinks of Corot as though he had been a child until he was fifty and then first entered upon his adolescence. Up to 1846 he took from his father the yearly allowance of twelve hundred francs given him as a student, and in that year, when he received the Cross of the Legion of Honour, M. Corot doubled the sum for the future, observing: "Well, Camille seems to have talent after all." About the same time his friends remarked that he went about Barbizon one day more meditatively than usual. "My dear fellow," said he to one of them, "I am inconsolable. Till now I had a complete collection of Corots, and it has been broken to-day, for I have sold one for the first time." And even at seventy-four he said: "How swiftly one's life passes, and how much must one exert one's self to do anything good!" The history of art has few examples to offer of so long a spring. Corot had the privilege of never growing old; his life was a continual rejuvenescence. The works which made him Corot are the youthful works of an old man, the matured creations of a grey-headed artist, who--like Titian--remained for ever young; and for their artistic appreciation it is not without importance to remember this. [Illustration: _Baschet._ DUPRÉ. SUNSET. (_By permission of M. Jules Beer, the owner of the picture._)] Of all the Fontainebleau painters Corot was the least a realist: he was the least bound to the earth, and he was never bent upon any exact rendering of a part of nature. No doubt he worked much in the open air, but he worked far more in his studio; he painted many scenes as they lay before him, but more often those which he only saw in his own mind. He is reported to have said on his deathbed: "Last night I saw in a dream a landscape with a sky all rosy. It was charming, and still stands before me quite distinctly; it will be marvellous to paint." How many landscapes may he not have thus dreamed, and painted from the recollected vision! [Illustration: _L'Art._ DUPRÉ. THE HAY-WAIN.]