fence at the corner of a street. Francois Coppee
wrote of it: "It is a _chef d'oeuvre_, I maintain. The faces and the
attitudes of the children are strikingly real. The glimpse of meagre
landscape expresses the sadness of the poorer neighborhoods."

Previous to this time, her picture of two boys, called "Jean and
Jacques," had been reproduced in the Russian _Illustration_, and she now
received many requests for permission to photograph and reproduce her
"Meeting," and connoisseurs made requests to be admitted to her studio.
All this gratified her while it also surprised. She was at work on a
picture called "Spring," for which she went to Sevres, to paint in the
open.

Naturally she hoped for a Salon medal, and her friends encouraged her
wish--but alas! she was cruelly disappointed. Many thought her unfairly
treated, but it was remembered that the year before she had publicly
spoken of the committee as "idiots"!

People now wished to buy her pictures and in many ways she realized that
she was successful. How pathetic her written words: "I have spent six
years, working ten hours a day, to gain what? The knowledge of all I have
yet to learn in my art, and a fatal disease!"

It is probable that the "Meeting" received no medal because it was
suspected that Mlle. Bashkirtseff had been aided in her work. No one
could tell who had originated this idea, but as some medals had been
given to women who did not paint their pictures alone, the committee were
timid, although there seems to have been no question as to superiority.

A friendship had grown up between the families Bashkirtseff and
Bastien-Lepage. Both the great artist and the dying girl were very ill,
but for some time she and her mother visited him every two or three days.
He seemed almost to live on these visits and complained if they were
omitted. At last, ill as Bastien-Lepage was, he was the better able of
the two to make a visit. On October 16th she writes of his being brought
to her and made comfortable in one easy-chair while she was in another.
"Ah, if I could only paint!" he said. "And I?" she replied. "There is the
end to this year's picture!"

These visits were continued. October 20th she writes of his increasing
feebleness. She wrote no more, and in eleven days was dead.

In 1885 the works of Marie Bashkirtseff were exhibited. In the catalogue
was printed Francois Coppee's account of a visit he had made her mother a
few months before Marie's death. H