Page:François-Millet.djvu/131

 affirming on this decisive occasion, his absolute dissociation from the socialists and revolutionaries among whom people had, all his life, insisted upon including him. On the other hand, his Biblical temper awoke into greater ardour and inspiration under the blows and the shames of the period that he calls "the time of the great killing." He cries with the prophet: "Oh, sword of the Lord, wilt thou never take rest!" In order to drive away these sad thoughts, he went with Sensier to pay a long visit to the scenes of his childhood, and to his dear village which he loved with so passionate a tenderness. He found there fresh subjects of sadness. Where were now the dear beings whom he had once known and loved in these places? "I feel my heart so full that I cannot bear it," he writes on the 20th of June 1871. "Where are the poor eyes which used to look out with me over the immense expanse of the sea?"

He returned to Barbizon in November 1871. His health was much impaired, and from this time grew worse and worse. He was surrounded by family affection; he was on the