Page:François-Millet.djvu/77

Rh came back. Millet drew title-pages for songs and did not get paid for them; he was brought to the point of exchanging drawings for shoes and pictures for a bed; in a fortunate moment when he was quite destitute, an order came in for 30 francs from a midwife who wanted a sign-board. His distaste for politics received the finishing touch when he was obliged to defend the Assembly against the insurgents, and to assist in taking the barricades in the Rochechouart quarter. These scenes inspired him with a horror of war. To escape these sad impressions he went out of Paris as much as he could; he would go to the plain of Montmartre or to St Ouen, filling his eyes and his memory with everyday rustic scenes, and when he got home would paint his impressions: horses at a drinking trough, or oxen being led to the slaughter-house. Thus, he made his way dimly towards the decisive hour in which he was to attain full comprehension of his genius and to break every link with Parisian art.

For some years he had been feeling his way, hesitating to declare himself and continuing to paint pictures of peasant life and academic