hey could
accomplish it on the fat of the land--for the most part of their way a
rich and lovely land of vine-clad hills and opulent verdure.

The period was lavish in curious gay figures to set against the peaceful
background of the landscape. Strolling players of the open-air
theaters, jugglers, fortune-tellers, acrobats, Pierrots, and dancers
amused the pleasure-loving people. The band of Bohemians just described
was but one of many. Its peculiarity consisted in the presence among its
members of a singularly fair and spirited child, about twelve years of
age, whose alert face and gentle manner indicated an origin unmistakably
above that of his companions. This was little Jacques Callot, son of
Renee Brunehault and Jean Callot, and grandson of the grandniece of the
Maid of Orleans, whose self-reliant temper seems to have found its way
to this remote descendant.

Already determined to be an artist, he had left home with almost no
money in his pocket and without the consent of his parents, set upon
finding his way to Rome, where one of his playfellows--the Israel
Henriet, "_son ami_," whose name is seen upon so many of the later
Callot prints--was studying.

Falling in with the gipsies, he traveled with them for six or eight
weeks, receiving impressions of a flexible, wanton, vagabond life that
were never entirely to lose their influence upon his talent, although
his most temperate and scholarly biographer, M. Meaume, finds little of
Bohemianism in his subsequent manner of living. Felibien records that
according to Callot's own account, when he found himself in such wicked
company, "he lifted his heart to God and prayed for grace not to join
in the disgusting debauchery that went on under his eyes." He added also
that he always asked God to guide him and to give him grace to be a good
man, beseeching Him that he might excel in whatever profession he should
embrace, and that he "might live to be forty-three years old." Strangely
enough this most explicit prayer was granted to the letter, and was a
prophecy in outline of his future.

Arriving in Florence with his friends the Bohemians, fortune seemed
about to be gracious to him. His delicate face with its indefinable
suggestions of good breeding attracted the attention of an officer of
the Duke, who took the first step toward fulfilling his ambition by
placing him with the painter and engraver, Canta Gallina, who taught him
design and gave him lessons in the use of th