little in his spare hours for the time he was obliged to waste on pinky-
white faces and taffeta gowns. To an artist by nature there is nothing
harder than working perforce against the bent of one's own innate and
instinctive feelings.

In 1840, Millet found his life in Paris still so hard that he seemed for
a time inclined to give up the attempt, and returned to Greville, where
he painted a marine subject of the sort that was dearest to his heart--a
group of sailors mending a sail. Shortly after, however, he was back in
Paris--the record of these years of hard struggle is not very clear--
with his wife, a Cherbourg girl whom he had imprudently married while
still barely able to support himself in the utmost poverty. It was not
till 1844 that the hard-working painter at last achieved his first
success. It was with a picture of a milkwoman, one of his own favourite
peasant subjects; and the poetry and sympathy which he had thrown into
so commonplace a theme attracted the attention of many critics among the
cultivated Parisian world of art. The "Milkwoman" was exhibited at the
Salon (the great annual exhibition of works of art in Paris, like that
of the Royal Academy in London, but on a far larger scale); and several
good judges of art began immediately to inquire, "Who is Jean Francois
Millet?" Hunting his address out, a party of friendly critics presented
themselves at his lodgings, only to learn that Madame Millet had just
died, and that her husband, half in despair, had gone back again once
more to his native Norman hills and valleys.

But Millet was the last man on earth to sit down quietly with his hands
folded, waiting for something or other to turn up. At Cherbourg, he set
to work once more, no doubt painting more "pot-boilers" for the
respectable shop-keepers of the neighbourhood--complacent portraits,
perhaps, of a stout gentleman with a large watch-chain fully displayed,