JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET
whom he considered "very strong"; Lesueur, "one of the great souls of our school"; and above all Poussin, "who is the prophet, the wise man and the philosopher of it, and also the most eloquent arranger of a scene. I could spend my life looking at Poussin's work, and never be satisfied."
But the master of masters who overwhelmed him and dominated him tyrannically, the genius whom he preferred to all others, was Michael Angelo. I have already quoted the passage in which Millet describes his first meeting with Michael Angelo's work, and the contagion of pain by which he was suddenly overcome at the sight of a drawing which represented a man in a swoon. "I saw very well," he added, "that the man who had done that was capable of personifying the good and evil of humanity in a single figure. It was Michael Angelo. To say that is to say everything. I had already seen some poor engravings at Cherbourg; but here I touched the heart, and heard the voice of him who haunted me so strongly all my life."
Such were his great friends. Among the moderns, Delacroix alone, whom he loved and
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