Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/111

JEAN-FRANgOIS MILLET tinued his studies after the same easy fashion with Langlois as with his former master. Langlois, who was as much impressed by his pupil's talent as Mouchel had been and willing to serve him, made a personal appeal to the mayor and council, asking that Millet, as a promising young artist and one likely to do credit to the town, might be assisted in going to Paris to study under better advantages than he could enjoy at home. On the strength of this appeal, the council of .Cherbourg agreed to allow Mil- let an annuity of four hundred francs, equal to eighty dollars. With this small sum, and the addition of two hundred francs given him at parting by his mother and grandmother, making one hundred and twenty dollars in all, Millet left his quiet life in Normandy behind him and set out for Paris, where, as his biogra- pher, Sensier, says, he was to pass as a captive the richest years of his life. Millet was twenty-two years old when he went first to Paris and he remained there, with occasional visits to Gruchy and Cherbourg, for the next thirteen years. Paris was, from the first, more than distasteful to him. He was thor- oughly unhappy there. Outside the Louvre and the studios of a few artist- friends, he found nothing that appealed to what was deepest in him. His first experiences were unusually bitter. The struggle with poverty was hard to bear, but perhaps a more serious drawback was his want of an aim in art, of a substan- tial reason, so to speak, for the profession he had chosen, leading him to one false move after another in search of a subject. Unformed and unrecognized in his mind lay the desire to express in art the life he had left behind him in Nor- mandy ; but it was long before he arrived at the knowledge of himself and of his true vocation. He seems to have had no one in Paris to guide or direct him, and he rather stumbled into the studio of Delaroche, than entered it deliberately. He made but a brief stay there, and although he won the respect of his master, who would willingly have retained him as pupil and assistant, he was conscious that he learned nothing from Delaroche ; and accordingly, in company with another pupil, Marolles, who had taken a great liking to him, he left the studio without much ceremony ; and the two friends improvised a studio and a lodging for themselves in a garret in a poor quarter of the city, and began their search for a means of pleasing the public. But the way was not opened to either of them ; they could not sell what they painted, and they were reduced to serious straits. It was not the fault of the public. Marolles was but an indifferent painter at any time, and Millet would not have blamed the public for its indif- ference to subjects in which he himself took no real interest. Millet was at a loss what to do for bread. His mind ran back continually to his rural life at Gruchy. " What if I should paint men mowing or winnow- ing?" he said to Marolles; "their movements are picturesque ! " "You could not sell them," replied his friend. " Well, then, what do you say to fauns and dryads?" "Who in Paris cares for fauns and dryads?" "What shall I do, then ?" said Millet in despair. "What does the public like?" " It likes Bou- cher's Cupids, Watteau's Pastorals, nudities, anecdotes, and copies of the past." It was hard for Millet, but hunger drove him. He would not appeal to his