The Soil (La terre): A Realistic Novel

by Émile Zola

CHAPTER I.

Prior to the ploughing, La Beauce, stretched beneath the grey, damp, November sky, was hidden from sight by a covering of manure. Carts were lumbering along the country roads, piled up with old straw litter, which filled the air with a smoky vapour; it was as though the vehicles were bearing a supply of heat to the soil. Little piles of litter from cattle-sheds and stables rose up over certain fields like surging waves, while on other patches the manure had already been spread out, and soiled the land with a dingy flood. In this mass of fermenting dung the rich fertility of the coming spring lay brooding; the decomposed matter was returning to the universal womb, and life would once more spring from death. From end to end of the vast plain the air reeked with the strong odour of the dung, which by-and-bye would bring forth bread for men.

One afternoon Jean was taking a heavy load of manure to his plot of land on the plateau. It was a month since he and Françoise had taken up their abode in the old house, and they had now dropped into the monotonous, though busy, routine of country life. As Jean approached his field he espied Buteau in the adjoining plot, with a pitchfork in his hand, engaged in spreading out the manure which had been placed there in heaps the previous week. The two men cast side-long glances at each other. Being neighbouring owners, they frequently met and worked in close proximity to each other. Buteau greatly suffered; for the loss of Françoise's share, torn from his seven-acre plot, had left him with two detached parcels, one on the right and one on the left of Françoise's strip, and he constantly had to make circuits to get to one parcel from the other. The two men never said a word to each other. The chance was that some day a quarrel would break out between them, and then they would murder each other with their pitchforks.

Jean now commenced to discharge his load of manure. He had mounted on to the top of it; and, buried in it up to his hips, he was throwing it down with his pitchfork, when Hourdequin passed by, having been engaged in a round of inspection all the morning. He had retained a kindly recollection of his servant, and he stopped to speak to him. His form seemed to have aged, and his face was worn with the anxiety which his farm and other matters were causing him.

"Why have you never tried phosphates, Jean?" he asked.

Then, without waiting for a reply, he went on talking for a long time, as though he were trying to drown his thoughts. The true solution of successful agriculture, he said, was to be looked for in these various natural and artificial manures. He himself had tried everything, and had just passed through that craze for manures which sometimes seizes hold of farmers like a fever. He had tried all manner of things, one after another; grass, leaves, the refuse of pressed grapes, rape and colza oil-cake, crushed bones, flesh cooked and pounded, blood desiccated and reduced to a powder; and it was a source of vexation to him that the absence of any slaughterhouse in the neighbourhood prevented him from trying the effects of blood in a liquid state. He was now using road-scrapings, the scourings of ditches, the cinders and ashes from stoves, and especially scraps of waste wool, having purchased the sweepings of a woollen manufactory at Châteaudun. His theory was that everything that came from the soil was a proper material to return to it. He had great pits filled with compost at the rear of his farm, and in them he stowed all the refuse of the whole neighbourhood, whatever he could get hold of, even offal and putrifying carcasses picked out of stagnant ponds and elsewhere. It was all golden, he said.

"I have sometimes had very good results with phosphates," he remarked to Jean.

"But one gets so dreadfully cheated," Jean replied.

"Yes, certainly, if you buy from chance agents who are trying to do a small business in the country. At each market there ought to be a chemical expert who understands these artificial manures, which it is so difficult to get unadulterated. The future lies in them, I'm sure, but before that future comes I'm afraid we shall all be done up. We must have courage, however, and be content to suffer for the sake of others."

The stench of the dung which Jean was moving seemed to have somewhat revived the farmer's spirits. He revelled in it, and inhaled it with a sense of vigorous enjoyment, as though he smelt in it the procreative elements of the soil.