Then in a year another baby came, and that was a boy.  In two years another, but Raymond never forgave his wife that first offense.  He continued to struggle, trying various styles of pictures and ever hoping he would yet hit on what the public desired.  Mr. Vanderbilt had not yet made his famous remark about the public, and how could Raymond plagiarize it in advance?

At last he got money enough to get to Paris—­ah, yes, Paris, Paris, there talent is appreciated!

In Paris another baby was born—­it was looked upon as a calamity.  The poor little mother of the four little shivering Bonheurs ceased to struggle.  She lay quite still, and they covered her face with a white sheet and talked in whispers, and walked on tiptoe, for she was dead.

When an artist can not succeed, he begins to teach art—­that is, he shows others how.  Raymond Bonheur put his four children out among kinsmen in four different places, and became drawing-master in a private school.  Rosa Bonheur was ten years old:  a pug-nosed, square-faced little girl in a linsey-woolsey dress, wooden shoon, with a yellow braid hanging down her back tied with a shoestring.  She could draw—­all children can draw—­and the first things children draw are animals.

Her father had taught her a little and laughed at her foolish little lions and tigers, all duly labeled.

When twelve years of age the good people with whom she lived said she must learn dressmaking.  She should be an artist of the needle.  But after some months she rebelled and, making her way across the city to where her father was, demanded that he should teach her drawing.  Raymond Bonheur hadn’t much will—­this controversy proved that—­the child mastered, and the father, who really was an accomplished draftsman, began giving daily lessons to the girl.  Soon they worked together in the Louvre, copying pictures.

It was a queer thing to teach a girl art—­there were no women artists then.  People laughed to see a little girl with yellow braid mixing paints and helping her father in the Louvre; others said it wasn’t right.

“Let’s cut off the braid, and I’ll wear boy’s clothes and be a boy,” said funny little Rosalie.

Next day, Raymond Bonheur had a close-cropped boy in loose trousers and blue blouse to help him.

The pictures they copied began to sell.  Buyers said the work was strong and true.  Prosperity came that way, and Raymond Bonheur got his four children together and rented three rooms in a house at One Hundred Fifty-seven Faubourg Saint Honore.

Rosalie saw that her father had always tried to please the public; she would please no one but herself.  He had tried many forms; she would stick to one.  She would paint animals and nothing else.

When eighteen years old, she painted a picture of rabbits, for the Salon.  The next year she tried again.  She made the acquaintance of an honest old farmer at Villiers and went to live in his household.  She painted pictures of all the livestock he possessed, from rabbits to a Norman stallion.  One of the pictures she then made was that of a favorite Holland cow.  A collector came down from Paris and offered three hundred francs for the picture.