The personality of Millet is a surprising one in the France of the nineteenth century. He seems to be a man belonging to another time, another race, a different form of thought. In French art he is a solitary, almost an alien. He was equally misunderstood by his admirers and his detractors. The former hailed him as the bold and truthful interpreter of the new democracy. The latter regarded him as a declaiming socialist who set before the dominating middle classes a melodramatic picture of the suffering workers. Criticism saw political allusions in all his works. The gesture of the Sower appeared to be a threat of the populace, casting to heaven "handfuls of grape-shot." The Gleaners were called by Paul de St Victor "the three Fates of Pauperism." Baudelaire and Huysmans attribute to his peasants the souls of revolutionary orators. All of them look for political and social theses in his pictures or else for
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