Those student days in Paris were days of hunger and cold, fairlyoften, which Millet bore with the steady endurance of a Normanpeasant boy. But they were also days of something much worse to him--ofeffort misdirected, and of constant struggling against a system forwhich he was not fitted. In fact, Millet was an original genius,whereas the teachers at the School of Fine Arts were careful andmethodical rule-of-thumb martinets. They wished to train Milletinto the ordinary pattern, which he could not follow; and in theend, he left the school, and attached himself to the studio of PaulDelaroche, then the greatest painter of historical pictures in allParis. But even Delaroche, though an artist of deep feeling andpower, did not fully understand his young Norman pupil. He himselfused to paint historical pictures in the grand style, full ofrichness and beauty; but his subjects were almost always chosenfrom the lives of kings or queens, and treated with correspondingcalmness and dignity. "The Young Princes in the Tower," "TheExecution of Marie Antoinette," "The Death of Queen Elizabeth,""Cromwell viewing the Body of Charles I."--these were the kind ofpictures on which Delaroche loved to employ himself. Millet, onthe other hand, though also full of dignity and pathos, togetherwith an earnestness far surpassing Delaroche's, did not care forthese lofty subjects. It sometimes was the dignity and pathos of labour thatmoved him most; the silent, weary, noble lives of the uncomplainingpeasants, amongst whom his own days had been mostly passed.Delaroche could not make him out at all; he was such a curious,incomprehensible, odd young fellow! "There, go your own way, ifyou will," the great master said to him at last; "for my part, Ican make nothing of you."