Page:François-Millet.djvu/120

 doomed to earn his living in the sweat of his brow? Some people say that I deny the charms of the country. I find much more in it than charms—infinite splendours; I see as they do, the little flowers of which Christ said, 'I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' I see the haloes of the dandelions, and the sun breaking forth yonder, far beyond these regions, and its glory amid the clouds. None the less do I see the horses in the plain, smoking as they plough; and then, in some rocky spot, a man completely errené, whose panting gasps have sounded since morning, and who tries to stand upright a little to get breath. The drama is surrounded by splendours; it is no invention of mine."

Yet it might have been replied that in Millet's picture the hardship of the drama makes us a little oblivious of the poetry with which nature surrounds it. Millet himself probably felt this; for we find him, after a fresh incursion into religious subjects (drawings of two Flights into Egypt and of a Resurrection in which Christ arises from the tomb and ascends to heaven with the irresistible violence of a burst of thunder), diving deep into the