w the other, at
least as they appear from the outside, for with Callot, as with the less
veracious and ingenuous Watteau, it is the external aspect of things
that we get and from which we must form our inferences. Only in his
selection of his subjects do we find the preoccupation of his mind; in
his rendering he is detached and impersonal, helping us out at times in
our knowledge of his mental attitude with such quaint rhymes as those
accompanying _Les Grandes Miseres de la Guerre_, but chiefly confining
his hand to the representation of forms, relations and distances, with
as little concern as possible for the expression of his own temperament,
or for psychological portraiture of any sort.

In the little history, more or less authenticated, of his eventful youth
is the key to his charm as an artist, a charm the essence of which is
freedom, an easy, informal way of looking at the visible world, a light
abandon in the method of reproducing it, an independence of the tool or
medium, resulting in art which, despite its minuteness of detail, seems
to "happen" as Whistler has said all true art must. The beginning was
distinctly picturesque, befitting a nature to which the world at first
unfolded itself as a great Gothic picturebook filled with strange,
eccentric and misshapen figures.

One spring day in 1604, a band of Bohemians, such as are described in
Gautier's _Le Capitaine Fracasse_, might have been seen journeying
through the smiling country of Lorraine on their way to Florence to be
present there at the great Fair of the Madonna. No gipsy caravan of
to-day would so much as suggest that bizarre and irresponsible company
of men, women, and children, clad in motley rags, some in carts, some
trudging on foot, some mounted on asses or horses rivaling Rosinante in
bony ugliness, the men armed with lance, cutlass and rifle, a cask of
wine strapped to the back of one, a lamb in the arms of another. A
couple of the swarming children were decked out with cooking utensils,
an iron pot for a hat, a turnspit for a cane, a gridiron hanging in
front apron wise. Chickens, ducks, and other barnyard plunder testified
to the marauding course of the troop whose advent at an inn was the
signal for terrified flight on the part of the inmates. The camp by
night, if no shelter were at hand, was in the forest, where the
travelers tied their awnings to the branches of trees, built their
fires, dressed their stolen meats, and lived so far as t