JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
others from poverty, loneliness and indifference. But that which is exceptional in him and distinguishes him from others is the tranquillity with which he accepts his ill-fortune, as a matter of necessity, a superior and beneficent fate. Human folly, spite and egoism never disturb his admirable calm. "Yes, there are bad people," he says simply, "but there are good ones, and one good makes up to us for many bad. . . . I do not complain" (1844). How often he came to the end of his supplies! The baker refuses him bread, the tradesmen put in the bailiffs; at one time in 1853 he is left with exactly two francs. Again and again the burden of his letters is: "How shall I get my month's rent? For after all the first thing is that the children must eat" (1856). In 1857, the year of the Gleaners, poverty would have driven him to suicide, but that his conscience shrank in horror from the thought. In 1859, the year of the Angelus, he writes, in midwinter: "We only have wood for two or three days and do not know how to get any more. My wife will be confined next month and I shall be without anything."
