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Rh improbitatem tamen ejus surget et dabit illi quotquot habet necessarios." The stupefied painter said to the father: "You will be damned for having kept him back so long, for there is the stuff of a great artist in your boy." It was only from that day that Millet's artistic education began. He was then over twenty years of age.

He was hardly established at Cherbourg when his father fell ill of a brain fever; he returned hurriedly to the village, where he arrived in time to be present at the death-bed of his father, who died without recognising him (November 1835). Millet desired to give up painting once more, so as to stay at Gruchy, devote himself to his family and become the head of the household. It was his grandmother who told him that he "must accept the will of God," and obliged him to go back to Cherbourg. He there entered the studio of Langlois, who was a pupil of Gros, and regarded in the neighbourhood as a great