as generally of an aquatic turn
of mind. One very hot day we came upon her unexpectedly, and found her
perched upon a high stool, her dress tucked up, and her bare feet on the
chair rail. She was contemplating with evident satisfaction what she
called _le reservoir_. It looked very much as if she had been utilising
it as a footbath, by way of refreshing herself, but that may or may not
have been the case. There was an empty pail that told the story of the
reservoir. She had sprinkled part of its contents over the studio floor,
forming a quantity of little quivering black pearls, as the water licked
up the dust; the rest she reserved to make a pool where the hand of
time, or the foot rather, had produced a deep hollow in the red brick
floor. The cement of time must have been at work too, to weld the bricks
into a compact mass, for the water did not seem to percolate through to
the neighbour's ceiling, but stood its ground to bear witness to Rosa
Bonheur's aquatic genius.

After this success she had visions of gold-fish and fountains and of
_les grandes eaux de Versailles_, and she wanted more snubbing than
ever.

But water or no water, the heat in the studio remained intolerable. It
soon began to tell on Claude, who was not of the most robust, and who
was simply overworking himself. He did not like being told so--artists
never do; he had got into difficulties with his picture, and now that it
was in distress he would not leave it.

It really needs as much patience and perseverance to mature a picture as
to rear a child. All goes smoothly for a while, and one's offspring,
picture or baby, is a source of happiness. Then comes a hitch, an
illness, and everything seems darkness. But just as a father does not
give in and say, "Oh, this baby is no use, pitch it aside," so a true
picture parent does not gash the canvas of his own painting with a
knife, or cast it away because it has the scarlet or yellow fever, or
because it tells of a crooked leg or a deformed limb. On the contrary,
he sets to work and tends the patient with soothing oils, and with the
whole arsenal of remedies his palette affords. Wonderful are the cures
that have been effected on canvas, and little does the public know, when
it admires the completed work, how desperately the artist has had to
struggle at times to preserve even a spark of vitality in it, and how
narrowly it escaped destruction at his hands.

Claude had got into a phase of despair. Several