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Rh not like everybody else." Millet worked his best and drew obediently from the antique; at a later date he told a friend that Delaroche used to make his pupils draw the statue of Germanicus once a fortnight, "which was a good deal." At last he could bear it no longer. As Delaroche himself said, "he knew too much and not enough" to follow these academic lessons. He left the studio and took a room with a companion in the Val de Grâce quarter. He went to the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève to study the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer, Jean Cousin, Michael Angelo, Poussin, Vasari's Lives, and everything that could help him to closer intimacy with his great friends of the past.

These were years of bitter poverty. In order to live, Millet had to paint imitations of Watteau, whom he did not like, and of Boucher, who disgusted him. He held out a long time against this humiliation but his comrade persuaded him. Sometimes he returned to the Bible and painted Jacob in the tents of Laban or Ruth and Boaz. He sold these works at from five to ten francs apiece. Every year from 1838 to 1840 he went to spend some