But Corot was as great and strong as a Hercules. In his blue blouse, with his woollen cap and the inevitable short Corot pipe in his mouth--a pipe which has become historical--one would have taken him for a carter rather than a celebrated painter. At the same time he remained during his whole life--a girl: twenty years senior to all the great landscape painters of the epoch, he was at once a patriarch in their eyes and their younger comrade. His long white hair surrounded the innocent face of a ruddy country girl, and his kind and pleasant eyes were those of a child listening to a fairy-tale. In 1848, during the fighting on the barricades, he asked with childish astonishment: "What is the matter? Are we not satisfied with the Government?" And during the war in 1870 this great hoary-headed child of seventy-four bought a musket, to join in fighting against Germany. Benevolence was the joy of his old age. Every friend who begged for a picture was given one, while for money he had the indifference of a hermit who has no wants and neither sows nor reaps, but is fed by his Heavenly Father. He ran breathlessly after an acquaintance to whom, contrary to his wont, he had refused five thousand francs: "Forgive me," he said; "I am a miser, but there they are." And when a picture-dealer brought him ten thousand francs he gave him the following direction: "Send them," he said, "to the widow of my friend Millet; only, she must believe that you have bought pictures from _him_." His one passion was music, his whole life "an eternal song." Corot was a happy man, and no one more deserved to be happy. In his kind-hearted vivacity and even good spirits he was a favourite with all who came near him and called him familiarly their Papa Corot. Everything in him was healthy and natural; his was a harmonious nature, living and working happily. This harmony is reflected in his art. And he saw the joy in nature which he had in himself. [Illustration: _Gaz. des Beaux-Arts._ DIAZ. THE DESCENT OF THE BOHEMIANS.] Everything that was coarse or horrible in nature he avoided, and his own life passed without romance or any terrible catastrophes. He has no picture in which there is a harassed tree vexed by the storm. Corot's own spirit was touched neither by passions nor by the strokes of fate. There is air in his landscapes, but never storm; streams, but not torrents; waters, but not floods; plains, but not rugged mountains. All is soft and quiet as his own heart, whose peace the storm never troubled. [Illustration: _L'Art._ DIAZ. AMONG THE FOLIAGE.]