* * * * *

Living at the village of Barbizon, or near it, were Theodore Rousseau,
Hughes Martin, Louis LeRoy and Clerge.

These men were artists, and their peasant neighbors recognized them as
separate and apart from themselves. They were Summer boarders. But Millet
was a peasant in thought and feeling and sympathy, and mingled with the
people on an absolute equality. He was peasant--and more than peasant;
for the majesty of the woods, the broken rocks, the sublime stretches of
meadow-lands with their sights, odors and colors intoxicated him with
their beauty. He felt as if he had never before looked upon God's
beautiful world.

And yet Paris was only a day's journey away! There he could find a market
for his work. To be near a great city is a satisfaction to every
intellectual worker, but, if he is wise, his visits to the city are far
apart. All he needs is the thought that he can go if he chooses.

Millet was thirty-four years of age when he reached Barbizon. There he
was to remain for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life--to live
in the one house--years of toil, and not lacking in poverty, pain and
anxiety, but years of freedom, for he worked as he wished and called no
man master.

It is quite the custom to paint the life of Millet at Barbizon as one of
misery and black unrest; but those who do this are the people who read
pain into his pictures: they do not comprehend the simplicity and
sublimity and quiet joy that were possible in this man's nature, and in
the nature of the people he pictured.