Page:François-Millet.djvu/85

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jean françois millet

himself in rather a formal way, but with "a mixture of cordiality and dignified reserve." In his own home and among his friends he "resumed his distinguished judgment about men and things, his extreme good temper and his natural speech." Piédagnel says that he spoke concisely, with picturesque and unexpected turns. Wheelwright, who was much struck by "the dignity of his manners and the serious charm of his conversation," says that "when he grew warm over some favourite subject he would talk for an hour or two with extraordinary clearness, eloquence and choice of expressions." He possessed a remarkable memory and genuine erudition, fed chiefly by the Bible, Theocritus and Virgil. His dress was of the simplest and pretty negligent. When Sensier saw him for the first time in 1847, he found him wearing a brown cloak and a woollen cap like a coachman, and presenting the appearance, he says, of a mediæval painter. At Barbizon he dressed more rustically still in an old red jersey or a knitted vest that met his trousers but imperfectly and allowed a glimpse of shirt at the waist, an old straw hat limp from exposure to many rains, so

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