"Joan of Arc" was succeeded by "The Beggar," that life-size figure of the haggard old tramp who, with a thick stick under his arm--of which he would make use upon any suitable occasion--picks up what he can in the villages, saying a paternoster before the doors while he begs. This time he has been ringing at the porch of an ordinary middle-class dwelling, and he is sulkily thrusting into the wallet slung round his shoulders a great hunch of bread which a little girl has just given to him. There is a mixture of spite and contempt in his eyes as he shuffles off in his heavy wooden shoes. And behind the doorpost the little girl, who, in her pretty blue frock, has such a trim air of wearing her Sunday best, looks rather alarmed and glances timidly at the mysterious old man.
"Un brave Homme," or "Le Père Jacques," as the master afterwards called the picture, was to some extent a pendant to "The Beggar." He comes out of the wood wheezing, with a pointed cap upon his head and a heavy bundle of wood upon his shoulders, whilst at his side his little grandchild is plucking the last flowers. It is November; the leaves have turned yellow and cover the ground. Père Jacques is providing against the Winter. And the Winter is drawing near--death.
Bastien-Lepage's health had never been good, nor was Parisian life calculated to make it better. Slender and delicate, blond with blue eyes and a sharply chiselled profile--_tout petit, tout blond, les cheveux à la bretonne, le nez retroussé et une barbe d'adolescent_, as Marie Baskirtscheff describes him--he was just the type which _Parisiennes_ adore. His studio was besieged; there was no entertainment to which he was not invited, no committee, no meeting to hold judgment over pictures at which he was not present. Amateurs fought for his works and asked for his advice when they made purchases. Pupils flocked to him in numbers. He was intoxicated with the Parisian world, enchanted with its modern elegance; he loved the vibration of life, and rejoiced in masked balls like a child. Consumptive people are invariably sensuous, drinking in the pleasures of life with more swift and hasty draughts. He then left Paris and plunged into the whirlpool of other great cities. From Switzerland, Venice, and London he came back with pictures and landscapes. In London, indeed, he painted that beautiful picture "The Flower-Girl," the pale, delicate child upon whose faded countenance the tragedy of life has so early left its traces. Through the whole summer of 1882 he worked incessantly in Damvillers. Once more he painted his native place in a landscape of the utmost refinement. Here, as in his portraits, everything has been rendered with a positive trenchancy, with a severe, scientific effort after truth, in which there lies what is almost a touch of aridness. And yet an indescribable magic is thrown over the fragrant green of the meadows, the young, quivering trees, and the still pond which lies rippling in the cloudless summer day.