a half caressing
movement, and placed it on the easel. "_Voila!_ (There!)" was all
he said. The panel represented three golden juicy pears, their fat sides
relieved one against the other, forming a compact group which, through
the magic of color, told of autumn sun, and almost gave the odor of
ripened fruit. It was a lovely bit of painting, and much interested, I
said: "Pardon me, but you seem as much or more proud of this than
anything you have shown."

"Exactly," answered Millet, with an amused smile at my eagerness.
"Everything in nature is good to paint, and the painter's business is to
be occupied with his manner of rendering it. These pears, a man or a
woman, a flock of sheep, all have the same qualities for a painter.
There are," with a gesture of his hands to make his meaning clear,
"things that lie flat, that are horizontal, like a plain; and there are
others which stand up, are perpendicular; and there are the planes
between: all of which should be expressed in a picture. There are the
distances between objects also. But all this can be found in the
simplest thing as in the most complicated."

"But," I again ventured, "surely some subjects are more important than
others."

"Some are more interesting in the sense that they add to the problems of
a painter. When he has to paint a human being, he has to represent truth
of action, the particular character of an individual; but he must do the
latter when he paints a pear. No two pears are alike."

I fear at the time I hardly understood the importance of the lesson
which I then received; certainly not to the degree with which experience
has confirmed it. But I have written it here, the sense, if not the
actual language, because Millet has been so often misrepresented as
seeking to point a moral through the subject of his pictures. When we
recall the manner in which "The Angelus" was paraded through the country
a few years ago, and the genuine sentiment of the simple scene--where
Millet had endeavored to express "the things that lie flat, like a
plain; and the things that stand up," like his peasants--was travestied
by gushing sentimentalists, it is pleasant to think of the wholesome
common sense of the great painter.

[Illustration: A YOUNG SHEPHERDESS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS
MILLET.

The background here is typical of that part of the forest of
Fontainebleau which borders the plain of Barbizon.]

The picture which I had specially come to see was