k umbrage at Delaroche's explanation that his support
was already pledged to another candidate for the prize, and left the
_atelier_ of that master after little more than a year's work. But that
he had already acquired most of what was to be learned there is shown,
if by nothing else, by the master's promise to push him for the prize
the year following. This was in 1838, and for a year or two longer
Millet worked in the life classes of Suisse and Boudin without a master.
His pension was first cut down and then withdrawn altogether, and he
was thrown upon his own resources. His struggles and his poverty during
the next few years were those of many a young artist, aggravated, in his
case, by two imprudent marriages. But during all the time that he was
painting portraits in Cherbourg or little nudes in Paris he was steadily
gaining reputation and making friends. If we had not the pictures
themselves to show us how able and how well-trained a workman he was,
the story told us by Wyatt Eaton, in "Modern French Masters," would
convince us. It was in the last year of Millet's life that he told the
young American how, in his early days, a dealer would come to him for a
picture and, "having nothing painted, he would offer the dealer a book
and ask him to wait for a little while that he might add a few touches
to the picture." He would then go into his studio and take a fresh
canvas, or a panel, and in two hours bring out a little nude figure,
which he had painted during that time, and for which he would receive
twenty or twenty-five francs. It was the work of this time that Diaz
admired for its color and its "immortal flesh painting"; that caused
Guichard, a pupil of Ingres, to tell his master that Millet was the
finest draughtsman of the new school; that earned for its author the
title of "master of the nude."

He did all kinds of work in these days, even painting signs and
illustrating sheet music, and it was all capital practice for a young
man, but it was not what he wanted to do. A great deal has been made of
the story of his overhearing some one speak of him as "a fellow who
never paints anything but naked women," and he is represented as
undergoing something like a sudden conversion and as resolving to "do no
more of the devil's work." As a matter of fact, he had, from the
first, wanted to paint "men at work in the fields," with their "fine
attitudes," and he only tried his hand at other things because he had
his living t