Gifted with great strength, he piled up great masses of granite, to reclaim a precious morsel of earth from the hungry maw of the sea; lifting his voice, as he worked, in resonant chants of the church.  He it was who taught Millet to read; and, later, it was another priest, the Abbe Jean Lebrisseux, who, in the intervals of the youth’s work in the fields, where he had early become an efficient aid to his father, continued his instruction.  With the avidity of intelligence Millet profited by this instruction, not only in the more ordinary studies, but in Latin, with the Bible and Virgil as text-books.  His mind was also nourished by the books belonging to the scanty library of his granduncle.  These were of a purely religious character—­the “History of the Saints,” the “Confessions” of St. Augustine, the letters of St. Jerome, and the works of Bossuet and Fenelon.

[Illustration:  The Gleaners.  From A painting in the Louvre, by Jean Francois Millet, exhibited in the Salon of 1857.

“The three fates of pauperism” was the disdainful appreciation of Paul de Saint-Victor on the first exhibition of this picture, while Edmond About wrote:  “The picture attracts one from afar by its air of grandeur and serenity.  It has the character of a religious painting.  It is drawn without fault, and colored without crudity; and one feels the August sun which ripens the wheat.”  Sensier says:  “The picture sold with difficulty for four hundred dollars.  What is it worth to-day?”]

In his father, whose strongest characteristic was an intense love of nature, Millet found an unconscious influence in the direction which his life was to follow.  Millet recalled in after life that he would show him a blade of grass or a flower, and say:  “See how beautiful; how the petals overlap; and the tree there, how strong and fine it is!” It was his father who was attentive to the youth’s first rude efforts, and who encouraged him when the decisive step was to be taken, which Millet, feeling that his labor in the fields was necessary to the common good of the family, hesitated to take.  The boy was in his eighteenth year when his father said: 

“My poor Francois, you are tormented between your desire to be an artist and your duty to the family.  Now that your brothers are growing, they can take their turn in the fields.  I have long wished that you could be instructed in the craft of the painter, which I am told is so noble, and we will go to Cherbourg and see what can be done.”

[Illustration:  The Angeles, Millet’s most famous picture.

Reproduced by permission of Braun, Clement & Co.  Despite its fame, this is distinctly not Millet’s masterpiece.  During his life it sold for about ten thousand dollars, and later for one hundred and fifty thousand.]