JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
he said, "equal to that of lying on the ferns and looking at the clouds." The forest filled him with rapture and terror. "If you were to see how beautiful the forest is! I run there sometimes at the end of the day, when my day's work is over, and I come back every time crushed! The calmness and grandeur are appalling, so much so that I find myself feeling really frightened. I don't know what those rascals of trees say to one another, but they say something and we don't understand it, because we don't talk the same language, that is all. Only I don't think they make puns." In the evenings he busied himself with his children, his "toads," as he laughingly called them, and would tell them fanciful stories or read aloud. A charming letter to Rousseau which has recently come to light, and which dates no doubt from 1855 or 1856, shows us Millet in a cheerful mood, amid the noisy little throng whom he worshipped, in the intimacy of his family life, and amid the peace of the august forest whose lofty and restful silence surrounded his home.[1]
- ↑ Published by Charavay in the review "Cosmopolis" in April 1898.
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