between: all of which should be expressed in a picture. There are the
distances between objects also. But all this can be found in the
simplest thing as in the most complicated."

"But," I again ventured, "surely some subjects are more important than
others."

"Some are more interesting in the sense that they add to the problems of
a painter. When he has to paint a human being, he has to represent truth
of action, the particular character of an individual; but he must do the
latter when he paints a pear. No two pears are alike."

I fear at the time I hardly understood the importance of the lesson
which I then received; certainly not to the degree with which experience
has confirmed it. But I have written it here, the sense, if not the
actual language, because Millet has been so often misrepresented as
seeking to point a moral through the subject of his pictures. When we
recall the manner in which "The Angelus" was paraded through the country
a few years ago, and the genuine sentiment of the simple scene--where
Millet had endeavored to express "the things that lie flat, like a
plain; and the things that stand up," like his peasants--was travestied
by gushing sentimentalists, it is pleasant to think of the wholesome
common sense of the great painter.

[Illustration: A YOUNG SHEPHERDESS. FROM A PAINTING BY JEAN FRANCOIS
MILLET.

The background here is typical of that part of the forest of
Fontainebleau which borders the plain of Barbizon.]