escription of Millet's home, went back at
right angles from the street, and contained the various apartments of
the family, many of them on the ground floor, and all of the most modest
character. It was a source of wonder how so large a family could inhabit
so small a house. The garden lay in front, and extended back of the
house. A high wall with a little door, painted green, by which you
entered, ran along the street, and ended at the studio, which was, like
the dining-room, on the street. The garden was pleasant with flowers and
trees, the kitchen garden being at the rear. But a few short years ago,
within its walls Madame Millet plucked a red rose, and gave it to me,
saying: "My husband planted this." Outside the little green door, on
either hand, were stone benches set against the wall, on which the
painter's children sometimes sat and played; but it is somewhat strange
that I never remember Millet at his door or on the village street. He
walked a great deal, but always went out of the garden to the fields
back of the house, and from there gained the forest or the plain. Among
the young painters who frequented Barbizon in those days (which were,
however, long after the time when the men of Millet's age established
themselves there), there were, strange as it may seem, few who cared for
Millet's work, and many who knew little or nothing of it. The prejudices
of the average art student are many and indurated. His horizon is apt to
be bounded by his master's work or the last Salon success, and as Millet
had no pupils, and had ceased to exhibit at the Salon, he was little
known to most of the youths who, as I look back, must have made Barbizon
a most undesirable place for a quiet family to live in. An accident
which made me acquainted with Millet's eldest son, a painter of talent,
seemed for a time to bring me no nearer to knowing the father until one
day some remark of mine which showed at least a sincere admiration for
his work made the son suggest that I should come and see a recently
completed picture.

If the crowd of young painters who frequented the village were
indifferent to Millet, such was not the case with people from other
places. The "personally conducted" were then newly invented, and I have
seen a wagon load of tourists, who had been driven to different points
in the forest, draw up before Millet's modest door and express
indignation in a variety of languages when they were refused admittance.
There wer