Page:François-Millet.djvu/34

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JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET

person and accepted it without surprise and without rebellion.

The lives of the principal French painters of his day and of the great landscape painters in particular, constitute a sad martyrology. Except in very few instances, such as those of Corot and Jules Duprè, almost all suffered cruelly from want, indigence, hunger, illness and ill-luck of every kind. The great Theodore Rousseau lived for the greater part of his days in terrible poverty and loneliness and died, struck down by general paralysis, with a mad wife beside him. Troyon died insane. Marilhat died insane. Decamps tormented himself his life long, lived without friends, and died in a tragic way. Paul Huet literally nearly died of hunger and lost his health owing to privations. Even Diaz was acquainted with black poverty and bodily sufferings. It cannot therefore be said that Millet was exceptionally treated by fortune, and he himself refuses to think so. "I do not pretend to be unhappier than many others" (1859); "I feel no resentment against anyone, not thinking myself more of a victim than are many others" (1857). He shared the common fate; he suffered like

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