, my Jean Louis, has said it was to be, and you must
return to Cherbourg."

Millet returned to Cherbourg, this time to the studio of one Langlois, a
pupil of Gros, who was the principal painter of the little city. But
Langlois, like his first master, Mouchel, kept him at work copying
either his own studies or pictures in the city museum. After a few
months, though, he had the honesty to recognize that his pupil needed
more efficient instruction than he could give him, and in August, 1836,
he addressed a petition to the mayor and common council of the city of
Cherbourg, who took the matter into consideration, and, with the
authorities of the department, voted a sum of one thousand francs--two
hundred dollars--as a yearly allowance to Millet, in order that he might
pursue his studies in Paris. Langlois in his petition asks that he be
permitted to "raise without fear the veil of the future, and to assure
the municipal council a place in the memory of the world for having been
the first to endow their country with one more great name."
Grandiloquent promise has often been made without result; but one must
admire the hard-headed Norman councillors who, representing a little
provincial city which in 1884 had but thirty-six thousand inhabitants,
gave even this modest sum to assure a future to one who might reflect
honor on his country.

[Illustration: NESTLINGS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, IN
THE MUSEUM AT LILLE.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co. A notable instance of
the scope of Millet's power, as tender in depicting children as it is
austere in "The Gleaners."]

With a portion, of this allowance, and a small addition from the
"economies" of his mother and grandmother, Millet went to Paris in 1837.
The great city failed to please the country-bred youth, and, indeed,
until the end of his life, Millet disliked Paris. I remember his saying
that, on his visits from Barbizon to the capital, he was happy on his
arrival at the station, but when he arrived at the column of the
Bastille, a few squares within the city, the _mal du pays_ took him
by the throat.

At first he spent all his time in the Louvre, which revealed to him what
the little provincial museum of Cherbourg had but faintly suggested.
Before long, however, he entered the studio of Paul Delaroche, who was
the popular master of the time. There he won the sobriquet of the "man
of the woods," from a savage taciturnity which was his defenc