PART I.
CHAPTER I.
That morning Jean, with a seed-bag of blue linen tied round his waist, held its mouth open with his left hand, while with his right, at every three steps, he drew forth a handful of corn, and flung it broadcast. The rich soil clung to his heavy shoes, which left holes in the ground, as his body lurched regularly from side to side; and each time he threw you saw, amid the ever-flying yellow seed, the gleam of two red stripes on the sleeve of the old regimental jacket he was wearing out. He strode forward in solitary state; and behind him, to bury the grain, there slowly came a harrow, to which were harnessed two horses, driven by a waggoner, who cracked his whip over their ears in long, regular sweeps.
The patch of ground, scarcely an acre and a quarter in extent, was of such little importance that Monsieur Hourdequin, the master of La Borderie, had not cared to send the drill-plough, which was in use elsewhere. Jean, then journeying due north over the field, had the farm-buildings exactly in front of him, a mile and a quarter off. On reaching the end of the furrow, he raised his eyes with a vacant look as he paused for a moment to take breath.
Before him were the low farm walls, and a patch of old slate, isolated on the outskirts of the plain of La Beauce, which stretched towards Chartres. Under a dull, late October sky lay ten leagues of arable land, where, at that time of year, great ploughed squares of bare, rich, yellow soil alternated with green expanses of lucern and clover; there was here not a slope, not a tree; the plain extended into the dim distance, curving down beyond the horizon, which was level as at sea. Westward, a small wood just edged the sky with a band of russet. In the centre a road—the road from Châteaudun to Orleans—of chalk-like whiteness, stretched four leagues straight ahead, displaying as it went a geometrical row of telegraph-posts. Nothing else but three or four wooden mills on log foundations, with their sails at rest; some villages forming islets of stone; and a distant steeple emerging from a depression in the landscape, the church itself being hidden among the gentle undulations of the wheat-fields.
Jean turned and lurched back again due south, his left hand holding the seed-bag, and his right slashing the air with an unbroken sheet of grain. He now had in front of him, quite near, and cutting trench-like through the plain, the narrow valley of the Aigre, beyond which the district of La Beauce resumed its unconfined course on to Orleans. Meadows and shady places could only be inferred from a range of tall poplars, the yellowish tops of which rose out of the dell, looking, as they just cleared the edge, like short bushes. Of the little village of Rognes, built upon the declivity, a few roofs only were in view, near the church, which raised on high its grey stone steeple, the dwelling-place of ancient families of ravens. And eastward, beyond the valley of the Loir,—where Cloyes, the chief town of the canton[1] nestled at two leagues' distance,—the far-off hills of Le Perche were visible, tinged with violet in the slate-grey light. There the old Dunois, now become the arrondissement of Châteaudun, lay between Le Perche and La Beauce, on the very frontier of the latter, at a spot which has obtained the name of Beauce the "Lousy," the soil there being less fertile. When Jean got to the end of the field, he stopped again, and glanced down along the stream of the Aigre, rippling bright and clear through the meadows, side by side with the road to Cloyes, which on that Saturday was furrowed by the carts of peasants going to market; then he turned up again.
And still, with the same step, with the same gesture, he set out north and returned south, wrapped in a living dust-cloud of seed; while, behind him the whip cracked and the harrow buried the germs, at the same quiet, contemplative rate. Heavy rains had retarded the autumn sowing; the season's manuring had been done in August, and the deep-lying fallows, duly cleared of weeds, had long been ready for a fresh yield of corn, after the clover and oats of the triennial rotation. Now the farmers were urged on by fear of coming frost, which threatened after the storms. The weather had suddenly turned cold and gloomy: there was no breath of wind, and but a dull light was distributed over all this ocean of land. Seed was being sown on all sides; there was a sower to the left, three hundred yards away; another farther off to the right; others, and yet others, lost to sight in the receding vista of the level fields. They formed little black silhouettes, mere strokes which became slimmer and slimmer, till they vanished in the distance. All made the same gesture, as they strewed the seed, which the mind's eye still saw encircling them, as with a wave of life. It was like a quiver passing over the plain, even into the dim distance, where the scattered sowers could no longer be seen.
Jean was coming down for the last time when he perceived, approaching from Rognes, a large red and white cow, the halter of which was held by a young girl, almost a child. The little peasant-girl and the animal were coming along the path which skirted the valley at the top of the plateau; and, with his back turned to them, he had gone up and finished the field, when a sound of running, mingled with stifled cries, made him look round, just as he was untying his seed-bag to depart. It was the cow running away, galloping over a field of lucern, and followed by the girl, who was exhausting her strength in trying to keep it back. Fearing an accident, he shouted:
"Leave go; why don't thee?"
But she did nothing of the kind, only panting and abusing her cow in angry, frightened tones.