a peinture nouvelle_," was his watchword; but if
time and experience had continued his education, if he had been granted
health to return from these excursions to the steady and the central, I
must believe that the name of Hills had become famous.

Siron's inn, that excellent artists' barrack, was managed upon easy
principles. At any hour of the night, when you returned from wandering
in the forest, you went to the billiard-room and helped yourself to
liquors, or descended to the cellar and returned laden with beer or
wine. The Sirons were all locked in slumber; there was none to check
your inroads; only at the week's end a computation was made, the gross
sum was divided, and a varying share set down to every lodger's name
under the rubric: _estrats_. Upon the more long-suffering the larger tax
was levied; and your bill lengthened in a direct proportion to the
easiness of your disposition. At any hour of the morning, again, you
could get your coffee or cold milk, and set forth into the forest. The
doves had perhaps wakened you, fluttering into your chamber; and on the
threshold of the inn you were met by the aroma of the forest. Close by
were the great aisles, the mossy boulders, the interminable field of
forest shadow. There you were free to dream and wander. And at noon, and
again at six o'clock, a good meal awaited you on Siron's table. The
whole of your accommodation, set aside that varying item of the
_estrats_, cost you five francs a day; your bill was never offered you
until you asked it; and if you were out of luck's way, you might depart
for where you pleased and leave it pending.

IV

Theoretically, the house was open to all comers; practically, it was a
kind of club. The guests protected themselves, and, in so doing, they
protected Siron. Formal manners being laid aside, essential courtesy was
the more rigidly exacted; the new arrival had to feel the pulse of the
society; and a breach of its undefined observances was promptly
punished. A man might be as plain, as dull, as slovenly, as free of
speech as he desired; but to a touch of presumption or a word of
hectoring these free Barbizonians were as sensitive as a tea-party of
maiden ladies. I have seen people driven forth from Barbizon; it would
be difficult to say in words what they had done, but they deserved their
fate. They had shown themselves unworthy to enjoy these corporate
freedoms; they had pushed themselves; they had "made their head"; they
w