THE DEVIL'S POOL

By George Sand


Translated From The French By Jane Minot Sedgwick And Ellery Sedgwick


With An Etching By E. Abot

1901




THE DEVIL'S POOL



THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

     _A la sueur de ton visaige,
        Tu gagnerais ta pauvre vie.
     AprГЁs long travail et usaige,
        Voicy la mort qui te convie._ *

THIS quaint old French verse, written under one of Holbein's pictures,
is profoundly melancholy. The engraving represents a laborer driving his
plow through the middle of a field. Beyond him stretches a vast horizon,
dotted with wretched huts; the sun is sinking behind the hill. It is the
end of a hard day's work. The peasant is old, bent, and clothed in rags.
He is urging onward a team of four thin and exhausted horses; the
plowshare sinks into a stony and ungrateful soil. One being only is
active and alert in this scene of toil and sorrow. It is a fantastic
creature. A skeleton armed with a whip, who acts as plowboy to the old
laborer, and running along through the furrow beside the terrified
horses, goads them on. This is the specter Death, whom Holbein has
introduced allegorically into that series of religious and philosophic
subjects, at once melancholy and grotesque, entitled "The Dance of
Death."

   * In toil and sorrow thou shalt eat
     The bitter bread of poverty.
     After the burden and the heat,
     Lo! it is Death who calls for thee.

In this collection, or rather this mighty composition, where Death, who
plays his part on every page, is the connecting link and predominating
thought, Holbein has called up kings, popes, lovers, gamesters,
drunkards, nuns, courtesans, thieves, warriors, monks, Jews, and
travelers,--all the people of his time and our own; and everywhere the
specter Death is among them, taunting, threatening, and triumphing. He
is absent from one picture only, where Lazarus, lying on a dunghill at
the rich man's door, declares that the specter has no terrors for him;
probably because he has nothing to lose, and his existence is already a
life in death.

Is there comfort in this stoical thought of the half-pagan Christianity
of the Renaissance, and does it satisfy religious souls? The upstart,
the rogue, the tyrant, the rake, and all those haughty sinners who make
an ill use of life, and whose steps are dogged by Death, will be surely
punished; but can the reflection that death is no evil make amends for
the long hardships of the blind man, the beggar, the madman, and the
poor peasant? No! An inexorable sadness, an appalling fatality brood
over the artist's work. It is like a bitter curse, hurled against the
fate of humanity.

Holbein's faithful delineation of the society in which he lived is,
indeed, painful satire. His attention was engrossed by crime and
calamity; but what shall we, who are artists of a later date, portray?
Shall we look to find the reward of the human beings of to-day in
the contemplation of death, and shall we invoke it as the penalty of
unrighteousness and the compensation of suffering?

No, henceforth, our business is not with death, but with life. We
believe no longer in the nothingness of the grave, nor in safety bought
with the price of a forced renunciation; life must be enjoyed in order
to be fruitful. Lazarus must leave his dunghill, so that the poor need
no longer exult in the death of the rich. All must be made happy, that
the good fortune of a few may not be a crime and a curse. As the laborer
sows his wheat, he must know that he is helping forward the work of
life, instead of rejoicing that Death walks at his side. We may
no longer consider death as the chastisement of prosperity or the
consolation of distress, for God has decreed it neither as the
punishment nor the compensation of life. Life has been blessed by Him,
and it is no longer permissible for us to leave the grave as the only
refuge for those whom we are unwilling to make happy.

There are some artists of our own day, who, after a serious survey of
their surroundings, take pleasure in painting misery, the sordidness of
poverty, and the dunghill of Lazarus. This may belong to the domain of
art and philosophy; but by depicting poverty as so hideous, so degraded,
and sometimes so vicious and criminal, do they gain their end, and is
that end as salutary as they would wish? We dare not pronounce judgment.
They may answer that they terrify the unjust rich man by pointing out to
him the yawning pit that lies beneath the frail covering of wealth; just
as in the time of the Dance of Death, they showed him his gaping grave,
and Death standing ready to fold him in an impure embrace. Now, they
show him the thief breaking open his doors, and the murderer stealthily
watching his sleep. We confess we cannot understand how we can reconcile
him to the human nature he despises, or make him sensible of the
sufferings of the poor wretch whom he dreads, by showing him this
wretch in the guise of the escaped convict or the nocturnal burglar. The
hideous phantom Death, under the repulsive aspect in which he has been
represented by Holbein and his predecessors, gnashing his teeth and
playing the fiddle, has been powerless to convert the wicked and console
their victims. And does not our literature employ the same means as the
artists of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?

The revelers of Holbein fill their glasses in a frenzy to dispel the
idea of Death, who is their cup-bearer, though they do not see him. The
unjust rich of our own day demand cannon and barricades to drive out
the idea of an insurrection of the people which Art shows them as slowly
working in the dark, getting ready to burst upon the State. The Church
of the Middle Ages met the terrors of the great of the earth with the
sale of indulgences. The government of to-day soothes the uneasiness of
the rich by exacting from them large sums for the support of policemen,
jailors, bayonets, and prisons.

Albert Durer, Michael Angelo, Holbein, Callot, and Goya have made
powerful satires on the evils of their times and countries, and their
immortal works are historical documents of unquestionable value. We
shall not refuse to artists the right to probe the wounds of society
and lay them bare to our eyes; but is the only function of art still
to threaten and appall? In the literature of the mysteries of iniquity,
which talent and imagination have brought into fashion, we prefer the
sweet and gentle characters, which can attempt and effect conversions,
to the melodramatic villains, who inspire terror; for terror never cures
selfishness, but increases it.

We believe that the mission of art is a mission of sentiment and love,
that the novel of to-day should take the place of the parable and the
fable of early times, and that the artist has a larger and more poetic
task than that of suggesting certain prudential and conciliatory
measures for the purpose of diminishing the fright caused by his
pictures. His aim should be to render attractive the objects he has at
heart, and, if necessary, I have no objection to his embellishing them
a little. Art is not the study of positive reality, but the search for
ideal truth, and the "Vicar of Wakefield" was a more useful and healthy
book than the "Paysan Perverti," or the "Liaisons Dangereuses."

Forgive these reflections of mine, kind reader, and let them stand as
a preface, for there will be no other to the little story I am going
to relate to you. My tale is to be so short and so simple, that I felt
obliged to make you my apologies for it beforehand, by telling you what
I think of the literature of terror.

I have allowed myself to be drawn into this digression for the sake of a
laborer; and it is the story of a laborer which I have been meaning to
tell you, and which I shall now tell you at once.




I -- The Tillage of the Soil

I HAD just been looking long and sadly at Holbein's plowman, and was
walking through the fields, musing on rustic life and the destiny of
the husbandman. It is certainly tragic for him to spend his days and his
strength delving in the jealous earth, that so reluctantly yields up her
rich treasures when a morsel of coarse black bread, at the end of the
day's work, is the sole reward and profit to be reaped from such arduous
toil. The wealth of the soil, the harvests, the fruits, the splendid
cattle that grow sleek and fat in the luxuriant grass, are the property
of the few, and but instruments of the drudgery and slavery of the many.
The man of leisure seldom loves, for their own sake, the fields and
meadows, the landscape, or the noble animals which are to be converted
into gold for his use. He comes to the country for his health or for
change of air, but goes back to town to spend the fruit of his vassal's
labor.

On the other hand, the peasant is too abject, too wretched, and too
fearful of the future to enjoy the beauty of the country and the charms
of pastoral life. To him, also, the yellow harvest-fields, the rich
meadows, the fine cattle represent bags of gold; but he knows that
only an infinitesimal part of their contents, insufficient for his daily
needs, will ever fall to his share. Yet year by year he must fill those
accursed bags, to please his master and buy the right of living on his
land in sordid wretchedness. Yet nature is eternally young, beautiful,
and generous. She pours forth poetry and beauty on all creatures and
all plants that are allowed free development.

She owns the secret of happiness, of which no one has ever robbed her.
The happiest of men would be he who, knowing the full meaning of his
labor, should, while working with his hands, find his happiness and his
freedom in the exercise of his intelligence, and, having his heart in
unison with his brain, should at once understand his own work and love
that of God, The artist has such delights as these in contemplating and
reproducing the beauties of nature; but if his heart be true and tender,
his pleasure is disturbed when he sees the miseries of the men who
people this paradise of earth. True happiness will be theirs when mind,
heart, and hand shall work in concert in the sight of Heaven, and there
shall be a sacred harmony between God's goodness and the joys of his
creatures. Then, instead of the pitiable and frightful figure of Death
stalking, whip in hand, across the fields, the painter of allegories
may place beside the peasant a radiant angel, sowing the blessed grain
broadcast in the smoking furrow. The dream of a serene, free, poetic,
laborious, and simple life for the tiller of the soil is not so
impossible that we should banish it as a chimera. The sweet, sad words
of Virgil: "Oh, happy the peasants of the field, if they knew their own
blessings!" is a regret, but, like all regrets, it is also a prophecy.
The day will come when the laborer too may be an artist, and may at
least feel what is beautiful, if he cannot express it,--a matter of far
less importance. Do not we know that this mysterious poetic intuition
is already his, in the form of instinct and vague reverie? Among those
peasants who possess some of the comforts of life, and whose moral
and intellectual development is not entirely stifled by extreme
wretchedness, pure happiness that can be felt and appreciated exists
in the elementary stage; and, moreover, since poets have already raised
their voices out of the lap of pain and of weariness, why should we say
that the labor of the hands excludes the working of the soul? Without
doubt this exclusion is the common result of excessive toil and of deep
misery; but let it not be said that when men shall work moderately and
usefully there will be nothing but bad workers and bad poets. The man
who draws in noble joy from the poetic feeling is a true poet, though he
has never written a verse all his life.

My thoughts had flown in this direction, without my perceiving that
my confidence in the capacity of man for education was strengthened by
external influences. I was walking along the edge of a field, which some
peasants were preparing to sow. The space was vast as that in Holbein's
picture; the landscape, too, was vast and framed in a great sweep of
green, slightly reddened by the approach of autumn. Here and there in
the great russet field, slender rivulets of water left in the furrows by
the late rains sparkled in the sunlight like silver threads. The day was
clear and mild, and the soil, freshly cleft by the plowshare, sent up
a light steam. At the other extremity of the field, an old man, whose
broad shoulders and stern face recalled Holbein's plowman, but whose
clothes carried no suggestion of poverty, was gravely driving his plow
of antique shape, drawn by two placid oxen, true patriarchs of the
meadow, tall and rather thin, with pale yellow coats and long, drooping
horns. They were those old workers who, through long habit, have grown
to be _brothers_, as they are called in our country, and who, when one
loses the other, refuse to work with a new comrade, and pine away with
grief. People who are unfamiliar with the country call the love of the
ox for his yoke-fellow a fable. Let them come and see in the corner of
the stable one of these poor beasts, thin and wasted, restlessly lashing
his lean flanks with his tail, violently breathing with mingled terror
and disdain on the food offered him, his eyes always turned toward the
door, scratching with his hoof the empty place at his side, sniffing the
yokes and chains which his fellow used to wear, and incessantly calling
him with melancholy lowings. The ox-herd will say: "There is a pair
of oxen gone;' this one will work no more, for his brother is dead. We
ought to fatten him for the market, but he will not eat, and will soon
starve himself to death." The old laborer worked slowly, silently, and
without waste of effort His docile team were in no greater haste than
he; but, thanks to the undistracted steadiness of his toil and the
judicious expenditure of his strength, his furrow was as soon plowed as
that of his son, who was driving, at some distance from him, four less
vigorous oxen through a more stubborn and stony piece of ground.

My attention was next caught by a fine spectacle, a truly noble subject
for a painter. At the other end of the field a fine-looking youth was
driving a magnificent team of four pairs of young oxen, through whose
somber coats glanced a ruddy, glow-like name. They had the short, curry
heads that belong to the wild bull, the same large, fierce eyes and
jerky movements; they worked in an abrupt, nervous way that showed how
they still rebelled against the yoke and goad, and trembled with anger
as they obeyed the authority so recently imposed. They were what is
called "newly yoked" oxen. The man who drove them had to clear a corner
of the field that had formerly been given up to pasture, and was
filled with old tree-stumps; and his youth and energy, and his eight
half-broken animals, hardly sufficed for the Herculean task.

A child of six or seven years old, lovely as an angel, wearing round his
shoulders, over his blouse, a sheepskin that made him look like a little
Saint John the Baptist out of a Renaissance picture, was running along
in the furrow beside the plow, pricking the flanks of the oxen with a
long, light goad but slightly sharpened. The spirited animals quivered
under the child's light touch, making their yokes and head-bands creak,
and shaking the pole violently. Whenever a root stopped the advance
of the plowshare, the laborer would call every animal by name in his
powerful voice, trying to calm rather than to excite them; for the oxen,
irritated by the sudden resistance, bounded, pawed the ground with their
great cloven hoofs, and would have jumped aside and dragged the plow
across the fields, if the young man had not kept the first four in order
with his voice and goad, while the child controlled the four others.
The little fellow shouted too, but the voice which he tried to make of
terrible effect, was as sweet as his angelic face. The whole scene was
beautiful in its grace and strength; the landscape, the man, the child,
the oxen under the yoke; and in spite of the mighty struggle by which
the earth was subdued, a deep feeling of peace and sweetness reigned
over all. Each time that an obstacle was surmounted and the plow resumed
its even, solemn progress, the laborer, whose pretended violence was
but a trial of his strength, and an outlet for his energy, instantly
regained that serenity which is the right of simple souls, and looked
with fatherly pleasure toward his child, who turned to smile back at
him. Then the young father would raise his manly voice in the solemn
and melancholy chant that ancient tradition transmits, not indeed to all
plowmen indiscriminately, but to those who are most perfect in the art
of exciting and sustaining the spirit of cattle while at work. This
song, which was probably sacred in its origin, and to which mysterious
influences must once have been attributed, is still thought to
possess the virtue of putting animals on their mettle, allaying their
irritation, and of beguiling the weariness of their long, hard toil.
It is not enough to guide them skilfully, to trace a perfectly straight
furrow, and to lighten their labor by raising the plowshare or driving
it into the earth; no man can be a consummate husbandman who does not
know how to sing to his oxen, and that is an art that requires taste
and especial gifts. To tell the truth, this chant is only a recitative,
broken off and taken up at pleasure. Its irregular form and its
intonations that violate all the rules of musical art make it impossible
to describe.

But it is none the less a noble song, and so appropriate is it to the
nature of the work it accompanies, to the gait of the oxen, to the peace
of the fields, and to the simplicity of the men who sing it, that no
genius unfamiliar with the tillage of the earth, and no man except an
accomplished laborer of our part of the country, could repeat it. At the
season of the year when there is no work or stir afoot except that of
the plowman, this strong, sweet refrain rises like the voice of the
breeze, to which the key it is sung in gives it some resemblance. Each
phrase ends with a long trill, the final note of which is held with
incredible strength of breath, and rises a quarter of a tone, sharping
systematically. It is barbaric, but possesses an unspeakable charm, and
anybody, once accustomed to hear it, cannot conceive of another song
taking its place at the same hour and in the same place, without
striking a discord.

So it was that I had before my eyes a picture the reverse of that of
Holbein, although the scene was similar. Instead of a wretched old man,
a young and active one; instead of a team of weary and emaciated horses,
four yoke of robust and fiery oxen; instead of death, a beautiful
child; instead of despair and destruction, energy and the possibility of
happiness.

Then the old French verse, "ГЂ la sueur de ton vis-aige," etc., and
Virgil's "O fortunatos... agricolas," returned to my mind, and seeing
this lovely child and his father, under such poetic conditions, and with
so much grace and strength, accomplish a task full of such grand
and solemn suggestions, I was conscious of deep pity and involuntary
respect. Happy the peasant of the fields! Yes, and so too should I be
in his place, if my arm and voice could be endowed with sudden strength,
and I could help to make Nature fruitful, and sing of her gifts, without
ceasing to see with my eyes or understand with my brain harmonious
colors and sounds, delicate shades and graceful outlines; in short, the
mysterious beauty of all things. And above all, if my heart continued
to beat in concert with the divine sentiment that presided over the
immortal sublimity of creation.

But, alas! this man has never understood the mystery of beauty; this
child will never understand it. God forbid that I should not think them
superior to the animals which are subject to them, or that they have not
moments of rapturous insight that soothe their toil and lull their cares
to sleep. I see the seal of the Lord upon their noble brows, for they
were born to inherit the earth far more truly than those who have bought
and paid for it. The proof that they feel this is that they cannot be
exiled with impunity, that they love the soil they have watered with
their tears, and that the true peasant dies of homesickness under the
arms of a soldier far from his native field. But he lacks some of my
enjoyments, those pure delights which should be his by right, as a
workman in that immense temple which the sky only is vast enough
to embrace. He lacks the consciousness of his sentiment. Those who
condemned him to slavery from his mother's womb, being unable to rob him
of his vague dreams, took away from him the power of reflection.

Yet, imperfect being that he is, sentenced to eternal childhood, he is
nobler than the man in whom knowledge has stifled feeling. Do not set
yourselves above him, you who believe yourselves invested with a lawful
and inalienable right to rule over him, for your terrible mistake shows
that your brain has destroyed your heart, and that you are the blindest
and most incomplete of men! I love the simplicity of his soul more than
the false lights of yours; and if I had to narrate the story of his
life, the pleasure I should take in bringing out the tender and touching
side of it would be greater than your merit in painting the degradation
and contempt into which he is cast by your social code.

I knew the young man and the beautiful child; I knew their history, for
they had a history. Everybody has his own, and could make the romance
of his life interesting, if he could but understand it. Although but a
peasant and a laborer, Germain had always been aware of his duties and
affections. He had related them to me clearly and ingenuously, and I had
listened with interest. After some time spent in watching him plow, it
occurred to me that I might write his story, though that story were as
simple, as straightforward, and unadorned as the furrow he was tracing.

Next year that furrow will be filled and covered by a fresh one. Thus
disappear most of the footprints made by man in the field of human life.
A little earth obliterates them, and the furrows we have dug succeed one
another like graves in a cemetery. Is not the furrow of the laborer of
as much value as that of the idler, even if that idler, by some absurd
chance, have made a little noise in the world, and left behind him an
abiding name?

I mean, if possible, to save from oblivion the furrow of Germain,
the skilled husbandman. He will never know nor care, but I shall take
pleasure in my talk.




II -- Father Maurice

"GERMAIN," said his father-in-law one day, "you must decide about
marrying again. It is almost two years now since you lost my daughter,
and your eldest boy is seven years old! You are almost thirty, my boy,
and you know that in our country a man is considered too old to go to
housekeeping again after that age; you have three nice children, and
thus far they have not proved a burden to us at all. My wife and my
daughter-in-law have looked after them as well as they could, and loved
them as they ought. Here is Petit-Pierre almost grown up. He goads the
oxen very well; he knows how to look after the cattle; and he is strong
enough to drive the horses to the trough. So it is not he that worries
us. But the other two, love them though we do, God knows the poor little
innocents give us trouble enough this year; my daughter-in-law is about
to lie in, and she has yet another baby to attend to. When the child
we are expecting comes, she will not be able to look after your little
Solange, and above all your Sylvain, who is not four years old, and who
is never quiet day or night. He has a restless disposition like yours;
that will make a good workman of him, but it makes a dreadful child, and
my old wife cannot run fast enough to save him when he almost tumbles
into the ditch, or when he throws himself in front of the tramping
cattle. And then with this other that my daughter-in-law is going to
bring into the world, for a month at least her next older child will
fall on my wife's hands. Besides, your children worry us, and give us
too much to do; we hate to see children badly looked after, and when we
think of the accidents that may befall them, for want of care, we cannot
rest. So you need another wife, and I another daughter-in-law. Think
this over, my son. I have called it to your mind before. Time flies,
and the years will not wait a moment for you. It is your duty to your
children and to the rest of us, who wish all well at home, to marry as
soon as you can." "Very well, father," answered the son-in-law, "if you
really wish it, I must do as you say. But I do not wish to hide it from
you that it will make me very sad, and that I hardly wish tor anything
but to drown myself. We know who it is we lose, we never know whom we
find. I had a good wife, a pretty wife, sweet, brave, good to her father
and mother, good to her husband, good to her children, good to toil in
the fields and in the house, well fitted to work,--in short, good for
everything; and when you had given her to me, and I took her, we did
not place it among our promises that I should go and forget about her if
I had the misfortune to lose her."

"What you say shows your good heart, Germain," answered Father Maurice.
"I know that you loved my daughter and that you made her happy, and
that had you been able to satisfy Death by going in her place, Catherine
would be alive today, and you would be in the graveyard. She deserved
all your love, and if you are not consoled, neither are we. But I do not
speak to you of forgetting her: God wished her to leave us, and we do
not let a day go by without telling him in our prayers and thoughts,
and words and actions, that we keep her memory and still sorrow for her
loss. But if she could speak to you from the other world, and let you
know what she wishes, she would tell you to find a mother for her little
orphans. So the question is to find a woman who will be worthy to take
her place. It will not be easy, but it is not impossible. And when
we shall find her for you, you will love her as you used to love my
daughter, because you are a good man, and because you will be thankful
to her for helping us and for loving your children."

"Very well, Father Maurice, I shall do as you wish, as I have always
done."

"It is only justice, my son, to say that you have always listened to the
friendly advice and good judgment of the head of the house. So let us
consult about your choice of a new wife. First, I don't advise you to
take a young girl. That is not what you need. Youth is careless, and, as
it is hard work to bring up three children, especially when they are of
another bed, you must have a good soul, wise and gentle, and well used
to work. If your wife is not about the same age as you, she will have
no reason to accept such a duty. She will find you too old and your
children too young. She will be complaining, and your children will
suffer."

"This is just what makes me uneasy. Suppose the poor little things
should be badly treated, hated, beaten?"

"God grant not," answered the old man. "But bad women are more rare with
us than good, and we shall be stupid if we cannot pick out somebody who
will suit us."

"That is true, father. There are good girls in our village. There is
Louise, Sylvaine, Claudie, Marguerite--yes, anybody you want."

"Gently, gently, my boy. All these girls are too young, or too poof,
or too pretty; for surely we must think of that top, my son. A pretty
woman is not always as well behaved as another!"

"Then you wish me to take an ugly wife?" said Germain, a little uneasy.

"No, not ugly at all, for this woman will bear you other children, and
there is nothing more miserable than to have children who are ugly and
weak and sickly. But a woman still fresh and in good health, who is
neither pretty nor ugly, would suit you exactly."

"I am quite sure," said Germain, smiling rather sadly, "that to get
such a woman as you wish, you must have her made to order. All the more
because you don't wish her to be poor, and the rich are not easy to get,
particularly for a widower."

"And suppose she were a widow herself, Germain? A widow without children
and with a good portion?"

"For the moment, I cannot think of anybody like this in our parish."

"Nor I either. But there are others elsewhere."

"You have somebody in mind, father. Then tell me, at once, who it is."




III -- Germain, the Skilled Husbandman

"YES, I have somebody in mind," replied Father Maurice. "It is a
Leonard, the widow of a GuГ©rin. She lives at Fourche."

"I know neither the woman nor the place," answered Germain, resigned,
but growing more and more melancholy.

"Her name is Catherine, like your dead wife's."

"Catherine? Yes, I shall be glad to have to pronounce that name,
Catherine; and yet if I cannot love one as much as the other, it will
pain me all the more. It will bring her to my mind more often."

"I tell you, you will love her. She is a good soul, a woman with a warm
heart. I have not seen her for a long time. She was not an ugly girl
then. But she is no longer young. She is thirty-two. She comes of a good
family, honest people all of them, and for property she has eight or ten
thousand francs in land which she would sell gladly in order to invest
in the place where she settles. For she, too, is thinking of marrying
again, and I know that if your character pleases her, she will not be
dissatisfied with your situation."

"So you have made all the arrangements?"

"Yes, except that I have not had an opinion from either of you, and that
is what you must ask each other when you meet. The woman's father is
a distant connection of mine, and he has been a good friend to me. You
know Father Leonard well?"

"Yes, I have seen you two talking at the market, and at the last you
lunched together. Then it was about her that he spoke to you so long?"

"Certainly. He watched you selling your cattle and saw that you drove
a shrewd bargain, and that you were a good-looking fellow and appeared
active and intelligent; and when I told him what a good fellow you were
and how well you have behaved toward us, without one word of vexation or
anger during the eight years we have been living and working together,
he took it into his head to marry you to his daughter. This suits me,
too, I admit, when I think of her good reputation and the honesty of her
family and the prosperous condition I know her affairs are in."

"I see, Father Maurice, that you have an eye to money."

"Of course I do; you have, too, have you not?"

"I do look toward it, if you wish, for your sake; but you know that,
for my own part, I don't worry whether I gain or not in what we make. I
don't understand about profit-sharing; I have no head for that sort
of thing. I understand the ground; I understand cattle, horses, carts,
sowing, threshing, and provender. As for sheep, and vineyards, and
vegetables, petty profits, and fine gardening, you know that is your
son's business. I don't have much to do with it. As to money, my memory
is short, and I should rather give up everything than fight about what
is yours and what is mine. I should be afraid of making some mistake and
claiming what does not belong to me, and if business were not so clear
and simple I should never find my way in it."

"So much the worse, my son; and this is the reason I wish you to have a
wife with a clear head to fill my place when I am gone. You never wished
to understand our accounts, and this might lead you into a quarrel with
my son, when you don't have me any longer to keep you in harmony and
decide what is each one's share."

"May you live long, Father Maurice. But do not worry about what will
happen when you die. I shall never quarrel with your son. I trust
Jacques as I do you; and as I have no property of my own, and all that
might accrue to me comes from your daughter and belongs to our children,
I can rest easy, and you, too. Jacques would never rob his sister's
children for the sake of his own, for he loves them all equally."

"You are right, Germain. Jacques is a good son, a good brother, and a
man who loves the truth. But Jacques may die before you, before your
children grow up; and in a family we must always remember never to
leave children without a head to look after them and govern their
disagreements; otherwise, the lawyer-people mix themselves up in it,
stir them up to fight, and make them eat up everything in law-suits.
So we ought not to think of bringing home another person, man or woman,
without remembering that some day or other that person may have to
control the behavior and business of twenty or thirty children and
grandchildren, sons-in-law and daughters-in-law. We never know how big a
family can grow, and when a hive is so full that the bees must form new
swarms, each one wishes to carry off her share of the honey. When I took
you for my son, although my daughter was rich and you were poor, I never
reproached her for choosing you. I saw that you were a hard worker, and
I knew very well that the best fortune for people in such a country as
ours is a pair of arms and a heart like yours. When a man brings these
into a family, he brings enough. But with a woman it is different. Her
work indoors saves, but it does not gain. Besides, now that you are
a father, looking for a second wife, you must remember that your new
children will have no claim on the property of your children by another
wife; and if you should happen to die they might suffer very much--at
least, if your wife had no money in her own right. And then the children
which you will add to our colony will cost something to bring up. If
that fell on us alone, we should surely take care of them without a word
of complaint; but the comfort of everybody would suffer, and your eldest
children would bear their share of hardship. When families grow too
large, if money does not keep pace, misery comes, no matter how bravely
you bear up. This is what I wished to say, Germain; think it over,
and try to make the widow GuГ©rin like you; for her discretion and her
dollars will help us now and make us feel easy about the future."

"That is true, Father. I shall try to please her and to like her."

"To do that you must go to find her, and see her."

"At her own place? At Fourche? That is a great way from here, is it not?
And we scarcely have time to run off at this season of the year."

"When it is a question of a love-match you must make up your mind to
lose time, but when it is a sensible marriage of two people, who take
no sudden fancies and know what they want, it is very soon decided.
To-morrow is Saturday; you will make your day's work a little shorter
than usual. You must start after dinner about two o'clock. You will be
at Fourche by nightfall. The moon rises early. The roads are good, and
it is not more than three leagues distant. It is near Magnier. Besides,
you will take the mare."

"I had just as lief go afoot in this cool weather."

"Yes, but the mare is pretty, and a suitor looks better when he comes
well mounted. You must put on your new clothes and carry a nice present
of game to Father Leonard. You will come from me and talk with him, pass
all of Sunday with his daughter, and come back Monday morning with a yes
or no."

"Very well," answered Germain calmly, and yet he did not feel very calm.

Germain had always lived soberly, as industrious peasants do. Married
at twenty, he had loved but one woman in his life, and after her death,
impulsive and gay as his nature was, he had never played nor trifled
with another. He had borne a real sorrow faithfully in his heart, and
it was not without misgiving nor without sadness that he yielded to his
father-in-law; but that father had always governed the family wisely,
and Germain, entirely devoted as he was to the common welfare and so,
by consequence, to the head of the house, who represented it, could not
understand that he might have wronged his own good sense and hurt the
interests of all. Nevertheless, he was sad. Few days went by when he did
not cry in secret, for his wife, and although loneliness began to weigh
on him, he was more afraid of entering into a new marriage than desirous
of finding a support in his sorrow. He had a vague idea that love might
have consoled him by coming to him of a sudden, for this is the only way
love can console. We never find it when we seek it; it comes over us
unawares.

This cold-blooded scheme of marriage that Father Maurice had opened to
him, this unknown woman he was to take for his bride, perhaps even all
that had been said to him of her virtue and good sense, made him pause
to think. And he went away musing as men do whose thoughts are too few
to divide into hostile factions, not scraping up fine arguments for
rebellion and selfishness but suffering from a dull grief, submissive to
ills from which there is no escape.

Meanwhile, Father Maurice had returned to the farm, while Germain,
between sunset and dark, spent the closing hour of the day in repairing
gaps the sheep had made in the hedge of a yard near the farm-buildings.
He lifted up the branches of the thorn-bushes and held them in place
with clods of earth, whilst the thrushes chattered in the neighboring
thicket and seemed to call to him to hurry, for they were eager to come
and see his work as soon as he had gone.




IV -- Mother Guillette

FATHER MAURICE found at his house an old neighbor who had come to talk
with his wife, seeking at the same time to secure a few embers to light
her fire. Mother Guillette lived in a wretched hut two gunshots away
from the farm. Still she was a willing and an orderly woman. Her poor
dwelling was clean and neat, and the care with which her clothes were
mended showed that she respected herself in the midst of her penury.

"You have come to fetch your evening fire, Mother Guillette," said the
old man to her. "Is there anything else you want?"

"No, Father Maurice," answered she; "nothing for the present. I am no
beggar, as you know, and I take care not to abuse the kindness of my
friends."

"That is very true. Besides, your friends are always ready to do you a
service."

"I was just talking to your wife, and I was asking her if Germain had
finally decided to marry again."

"You are no gossip," replied Father Maurice; "we can talk in your
presence without having any foolish tale-bearing to fear. So I will tell
my wife and you that Germain has made up his mind absolutely. To-morrow
morning he starts for the farm at Fourche."

"Good enough!" cried Mother Maurice; "poor child! God grant he may find
a woman as good and true as he."

"So he is going to Fourche?" remarked Mother Guillette; "how lucky that
is! It is exactly what I want. And since you were just asking me
if there were anything I wished for, I am going to tell you, Father
Maurice, how you can do me a service."

"Tell me what it is; we like to help you."

"I wish Germain would be so kind as to take my daughter along with him."

"Where? To Fourche?"

"No, not to Fourche, but to Ormeaux. She is to stay there the rest of
the year."

"What!" exclaimed Mother Maurice, "are you going to separate from your
daughter?"

"She must go out to work and earn her living. I am sorry enough, and she
is too, poor soul. We could not make up our minds to part Saint John's
Day, but now that Saint Martin's is upon us, she finds a good place as
shepherdess at the farms at Ormeaux. On his way home from the fair the
other day, the farmer passed by here. He caught sight of my little Marie
tending her three sheep on the common.

"'You have hardly enough to do, my little girl,' said he; 'three sheep
are not enough for a shepherdess: would you like to take care of a
hundred? I will take you along. Our shepherdess has fallen sick. She is
going back to her family, and if you will be at our farm before a week
is over, you shall have fifty francs for the rest of the year up to
Saint John's Day.'

"The child refused, but she could not help thinking it over and telling
me about it, when she came home in the evening, and found me downhearted
and worried about the winter, which was sure to be hard and long; for
this year the cranes and wild ducks were seen crossing the sky a whole
month before they generally do. We both of us cried, but after a time
we took heart. We knew that we could not stay together, since it is hard
enough for one person to get a living from our little patch of ground.
Then since Marie is old enough,--for she is going on to sixteen,--she
must do like the rest, earn her own living and help her poor mother."

"Mother Guillette," said the old laborer, "if it were only fifty francs
you needed to help you out of your trouble, and save you from sending
away your daughter, I should certainly find them for you, although
fifty francs is no trifle for people like us. But in everything we must
consult common sense as well as friendship. To be saved from want this
year will not keep you from want in the future, and the longer your
daughter takes to make up her mind, the harder you both will find it
to part. Little Marie is growing tall and strong. She has not enough at
home to keep her busy. She might get into lazy habits..."

"Oh, I am not afraid of that!" exclaimed Mother Guillette. "Marie is as
active as a rich girl at the head of a large family can be. She never
sits still with her arms folded for an instant, and when we have no work
to do, she keeps dusting and polishing our old furniture until it shines
like a mirror. The child is worth her weight in gold, and I should much
rather have her enter your service as a shepherdess than go so far away
to people I don't know. You would have taken her at Saint John's Day;
but now you have hired all your hands, and we cannot think of that till
Saint John's Day next year."

"Yes, I consent with all my heart, Guillette. I shall be very glad to
take her. But in the mean time she will do well to learn her work, and
accustom herself to obey others."

"Yes, that is true, no doubt. The die is cast. The farmer at Ormeaux
sent to ask about her this morning; we consented, and she must go. But
the poor child does not know the way, and I should not like to send her
so far alone. Since your son-in-law goes to Fourche to-morrow, perhaps
he can take her. It seems that Fourche is close to her journey's end. At
least, so they tell me, for I have never made the trip myself."

"It is very near indeed, and my son will show her the way. Naturally, he
might even take her up behind him on the mare. That will save her shoes.
Here he comes for supper. Tell me, Germain, Mother Guillette's little
Marie is going to become a shepherdess at Ormeaux. Will you take her
there on your horse?"

"Certainly," answered Germain, who, troubled as he was, never felt
indisposed to do a kindness to his neighbor.

In our community a mother would not think of such a thing as to trust
a girl of sixteen to a man of twenty-eight. For Germain was really
but twenty-eight, and although according to the notions of the
country people he was considered rather old to marry, he was still the
best-looking man in the neighborhood. Toil had not wrinkled and worn him
as it does most peasants who have passed ten years in till-ing the soil.
He was strong enough to labor for ten more years without showing signs
of age, and the prejudices of her time must have weighed heavily on the
mind of a young girl to prevent her from seeing that Germain had a fresh
complexion, eyes sparkling and blue as skies in May, ruddy lips, fine
teeth, and a body well shaped and lithe as a young horse that has never
yet left his pasture.

But purity of manners is a sacred custom in some districts far distant
from the corrupted life of great cities, and amongst all the
households of Belair, the family of Maurice was known to be honest and
truth-loving. Germain was on his way to find a wife. Marie was a child,
too young and too poor to be thought of in this light, and unless he
were a heartless and a bad man he could not entertain one evil thought
concerning her. Father Maurice felt no uneasiness at seeing him take the
pretty girl on the crupper. Mother Guillette would have thought herself
doing him a wrong had she asked him to respect her daughter as his
sister. Marie embraced her mother and her young friends twenty times,
and then mounted the mare in tears. Germain, sad on his own account,
felt all the more sympathy for her sorrow, and rode away with a
melancholy air, while all the people of the neighborhood waved good-by
to Marie without a thought of harm.




V -- Petit-Pierre

THE gray was young, good-looking, and strong. She carried her double
burden with ease, laying back her ears and champing her bit like the
high-spirited mare she was. Passing in front of the pasture, she caught
sight of her mother, whose name was the Old Gray as hers was the Young
Gray, and she whinnied in token of good-by. The Old Gray came nearer
the hedge, and striking her shoes together she tried to gallop along the
edge of the field in order to follow her daughter; then seeing her fall
into a sharp trot, the mare whinnied in her turn and stood in an uneasy
attitude, her nose in the air and her mouth filled with grass that she
had no thought of eating.

"That poor beast always knows her offspring," said Germain, trying to
keep Marie's thoughts from her troubles. "That reminds me, I never kissed
Petit-Pierre before I started. The naughty boy was not there. Last night
he wished to make me promise to take him along, and he wept for an hour
in bed. This morning again, he tried everything to persuade me. Oh, how
sly and coaxing he is! But when he saw that he could not gain his point,
the young gentleman got into a temper. He went off to the fields, and I
have not seen him all day."

"I have seen him," said little Marie, striving to keep back her tears;
"he was running toward the clearing with Soulas' children, and I felt
sure that he had been away from home a long time, for he was hungry and
was eating wild plums and blackberries. I gave him the bread I had for
lunch, and he said, 'Thank you, dear Marie; when you come to our house,
I will give you some cake.' He is a dear little child, Germain."

"Yes, he is," answered the laborer; "and there is nothing I would not do
for him. If his grandmother had not more sense than I, I could not have
helped taking him with me, when I saw him crying as though his poor
little heart would burst."

"Then why did you not take him, Germain? He, would have been very little
trouble. He is so good when you please him."

"He would probably have been in the way in the place where I am going.
At least Father Maurice thought so. On the other hand, I should have
thought it well to see how they received him. For no one could help
being kind to such a nice child. But at home they said that I must not
begin by showing off all the cares of the household. I don't know why I
speak of this to you, little Marie; you can't understand."

"Oh, yes, I do; I know that you are going away to marry; my mother spoke
to me about it, and told me not to mention it to a soul, either at home
or at my destination, and you need not be afraid; I shall not breathe a
word about it."

"You are very right. For the deed is n't done yet. Perhaps I shall not
suit this woman."

"I hope you will, Germain; why should you not suit her?"

"Who knows? I have three children, and that is a heavy burden for a
woman who is not their mother."

"Very true. But are not your children like other children?"

"Do you think so?"

"They are lovely as little angels, and so well brought up that you can't
find better children."

"There 's Sylvain. He is none too obedient."

"He is so very little. He can't help being naughty. But he is very
bright."

"He is bright it is true, and very brave. He is not afraid of cows
nor bulls, and if he were given his own way, he would be climbing on
horseback already with his elder brother."

"Had I been in your place, I would have taken the eldest boy along.
Surely people would have liked you at once for having such a pretty
child."

"Yes, if a woman is fond of children. But if she is not."

"Are there women who don't love children?"

"Not many, I think, but still there are some, and that is what troubles
me."

"You don't know this woman at all, then?"

"No more than you, and I fear that I shall not know her better after I
have seen her. I am not suspicious. When people say nice things to me,
I believe them, but more than once I have had good reason to repent, for
words are not deeds."

"They say that she is a very good woman."

"Who says so? Father Maurice?"

"Yes, your father-in-law."

"That is all very well. But he knows her no more than I."

"Well, you will soon see. Pay close attention, and let us hope that you
will not be deceived."

"I have it. Little Marie, I should be very much obliged if you would
come into the house for a minute before you go straight on to Ormeaux.
You are quick-witted; you have always shown that you are not stupid,
and nothing escapes your notice. Should you see anything to rouse your
suspicions, you must warn me of it very quietly."

"Oh! no, Germain, I will not do that; I should be too much afraid of
making a mistake; and, besides, if a word lightly spoken were to turn
you against this marriage, your family would bear me a grudge, and I
have plenty of troubles now without bringing any more on my poor dear
mother."

As they were talking thus, the gray pricked up her ears and shied; then
returning on her steps, she approached the bushes, where she began to
recognize something which had frightened her at first. Germain cast
his eye over the thicket, and in a ditch, beneath the branches of a
scrub-oak, still thick and green, he saw something which he took for a
lamb.

"The little creature is strayed or dead, for it does not move. Perhaps
some one is looking for it; we must see."