friendship between flock and mistress. When she
goes before them, they follow her, for they know her voice.

Among the traditions dear to the hearts of the French people is one of
a saintly young shepherdess of Nanterre, known as Ste. Genevieve. Like
the shepherdess of our picture, she was a dreamer, and her strange
visions and wonderful sanctity set her apart from childhood for a
great destiny. She grew up to be the saviour of Paris, and to-day her
name is honored in a fine church dedicated to her memory. It was the
crowning honor of Millet's life that he was commissioned to paint on
the walls of this church scenes from the life of Ste. Genevieve. He
did not live to do the work, but one cannot help believing that his
ideals of the maiden of Nanterre must have taken some such shape as
this picture of the Shepherdess.

In the painting from which our illustration is reproduced, the colors
are rich and glowing. The girl's dress is blue and her cap a bright
red. The light shining on her cloak turns it a rich golden brown.
Earth and sky are glorified by the beautiful sunset light.

As we look across the plain, the earth seems to stretch away on every
side into infinite distance. We are carried out of ourselves into the
boundless liberty of God's great world. "The still small voice of the
level twilight" speaks to us out of the "calm and luminous distance."

Ruskin has sought to explain the strange attractive power which
luminous space has for us. "There is one thing that it has, or
suggests," he says, "which no other object of sight suggests in equal
degree, and that is,--Infinity. It is of all visible things the least
material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth
prison-house, the most typical of the nature of God, the most
suggestive of the glory of his dwelling place."[2]

[Footnote 1: Like the watchdog described in Longfellow's _Evangeline_,
Part II.]

[Footnote 2: In _Modern Painters_, in chapter on "Infinity," from
which also the other quotations are drawn.]

VI

THE WOMAN FEEDING HENS

In walking through a French village, we get as little idea of the home
life of the people as if we were in a large town or city. The houses
usually border directly upon the street, and the spaces between are
closed with high walls, shutting in the thoroughfare as completely as
in a city "block." Behind these barriers each family carries on its
domestic affairs in the privacy of its own domain. T