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JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET Then we see the quiet and silent tenderness of home, motherly cares, The Meal, given to these nestlings, The Reading Lesson to the very attentive little maiden, the great events of childhood, The first steps. But the groundwork is always serious; and as soon as work resumes its place, there comes a character of tragedy. We feel the pressure of a divine law, a religious fate, weighing upon all creatures. Everywhere man is seen in conflict with the earth. It is a vast battle of which the year beholds the epic incidents: seed-time, harvest, red sunsets, pallid dawns, storms, the fall of the leaf, the passage of migrating birds, the succession of days and months; for nothing is insignificant, everything seems to play its part in this warfare between man and nature. Even in landscapes from which the human figure is absent, and in which day is breaking over sleeping lands, the conflict is heard muttering, ready to break out afresh. Thus we feel it in a chalk drawing that represents A plain at daybreak, empty, with a harrow 195