The remarks made on my "Man with the Hoe" seem always very strange to
me, and I am obliged to you for repeating them to me, for once more it
sets me marvelling at the ideas they impute to me. In what club have my
critics ever encountered me? A Socialist, they cry! Well, really, I
might answer the charge as the commissary from Auvergne did when he
wrote home: "They have been saying that I am a Saint-Simonian: it's not
true; I don't know what a Saint-Simonian is."
Can't they then simply admit such ideas as may occur to the mind in
looking at a man doomed to gain his living by the sweat of his brow?
There are some who tell me that I deny the charm of the country. I find
in the country much more than charm; I find infinite splendour; I look
on everything as they do on the little powers of which Christ said, "I
say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these." I see and note the aureole on the dandelion, and the sun which,
far away, beyond the stretching country, spends his glory on the clouds.
I see just as much in the flat plain; in the horses steaming as they
toil; and then in a stony place I see a man quite exhausted, whose gasps
have been audible since morning, who tries to draw himself up for a
moment to take breath. The drama is surrounded by splendours. This is no
invention of mine; and it is long since that expression "the cry of the
earth" was discovered. My critics are men of learning and taste, I
imagine; but I cannot put myself into their skins, and since I have
never in my life seen anything but the fields, I try to tell, as best I
can, what I have seen and experienced as I worked.
_Millet._