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Jean Francois hurried home with the order in his trembling fingers. Catherine read the order with misty eyes. She was not unduly elated–she knew that success must come some time. And husband and wife then and there decided that when the eighteen hundred francs were paid over to them they would move out of Paris.

They would make a home in the country. People do without things in the country, but they do not starve. You can raise vegetables, and even though the garden be small and the folks poor, God is good and the sunshine and showers come and things grow. And for fuel one can gather fagots if they are near a wood.

They would go to Barbizon–Barbizon, that tiny village on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau. Several artists who had been there in the Summer sketching had told them of it. The city was gradually smothering Jean Francois. He prayed for a sight of the great open stretches of pasture, and green woods and winding river.

And now it was all so near.

He set to work feverishly to paint the great picture that was to bring deliverance.

At last the picture was done and sent to the Director’s.

Days of anxious waiting followed.

The picture was accepted and paid for.

Jean Francois and Catherine cried and laughed for joy, as they tumbled their belongings into bags and bundles. The grocer who had trusted them took some of their furniture for pay, and a baker and a shoemaker compromised by accepting a picture apiece. They were going to Barbizon–going to the country–going to freedom! And so the father and the mother and the queer-looking, yellow children were perched on the top of the diligence with their bundles, bound for Barbizon. They looked into each other’s faces and their joy was too great for speech.

* * * * *

Living at the village of Barbizon, or near it, were Theodore Rousseau, Hughes Martin, Louis LeRoy and Clerge.

These men were artists, and their peasant neighbors recognized them as separate and apart from themselves. They were Summer boarders. But Millet was a peasant in thought and feeling and sympathy, and mingled with the people on an absolute equality. He was peasant–and more than peasant; for the majesty of the woods, the broken rocks, the sublime stretches of meadow-lands with their sights, odors and colors intoxicated him with their beauty. He felt as if he had never before looked upon God’s beautiful world.

And yet Paris was only a day’s journey away! There he could find a market for his work. To be near a great city is a satisfaction to every intellectual worker, but, if he is wise, his visits to the city are far apart. All he needs is the thought that he can go if he chooses.

Millet was thirty-four years of age when he reached Barbizon. There he was to remain for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life–to live in the one house–years of toil, and not lacking in poverty, pain and anxiety, but years of freedom, for he worked as he wished and called no man master.

It is quite the custom to paint the life of Millet at Barbizon as one of misery and black unrest; but those who do this are the people who read pain into his pictures: they do not comprehend the simplicity and sublimity and quiet joy that were possible in this man’s nature, and in the nature of the people he pictured.

From the time he reached Barbizon there came into his work a largeness, a majesty and an elevation that is unique in the history of art. Millet’s heart went out to humanity–the humanity that springs from the soil, lives out its day, and returns to earth. His pictures form an epic of country life, as he tells of its pains, its anxieties, its privations–yes, of its peace and abiding faith, and the joy and health and strength that comes to those who live near to Nature’s heart.