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Rh dramatic effects. Nothing, however, was farther from Millet's mind: he detested sentimental and melodramatic painting; he was indifferent to politics; he repudiated socialism.

Millet was never able to understand the declamatory meanings attributed to him by his critics. "My critics," he said, "are, I imagine, people of taste and instruction; but I cannot put myself into their skins, and as I have never seen anything in my life except the fields, I try to tell simply, and as best I can, what I have seen." When certain persons took the trouble to explain in a most literary and elaborate manner the expression of his Peasants carrying home a calf born in the fields, he remarked with ironical common sense that "the expression of two men carrying something on a hand-barrow is determined by the weight hanging at the end of their arms. ... If the weight be equal, whether they are carrying the ark of the temple or a calf, a nugget of gold or a stone, they will be subject to the law of the weight and their expression can indicate nothing but that weight." On more than one occasion he declared in violent