The style of the book changed. It became lyrical, and magniloquently celebrated the Revolution. 'Twas then, in the apotheosis of '89, that Jacques Bonhomme triumphed. After the taking of the Bastille, while the peasants burned the châteaux, the night of the 4th of August legalised the conquests of centuries by recognising the freedom of man and the equality of civil rights. "In one night, the ploughman had become the equal of the lord who, by virtue of his parchments, had drunk the peasant's sweat and devoured the fruits of his toilsome nights." Abolition of serfdom, of all the privileges of the nobles, of the ecclesiastical and manorial courts of justice; the re-purchase of vested rights, the equalisation of taxation, the admission of every citizen to all civil or military offices—so the list went on. The evils of the old life seemed to vanish one by one. It was the hosanna of a new golden age dawning for the ploughman, who was made the subject of a whole pageful of eulogy, and hailed as king and foster-father of the world. He only was of importance: down on your knees before his holy plough! The horrors of '93 were stigmatised in burning words, and the book wound up with a high-flown panegyric on Napoleon, the child of the Revolution, who had succeeded in "extricating it from the grooves of License, to ensure the happiness of the rural districts."
"That's true!" from Bécu, as Jean turned to the last page.
"Yes, that's true," said old Fouan. "We had fine times of it, I can tell you, when I was young. I saw Napoleon once, at Chartres. I was twenty. We were free; we had land; it was first-rate! I mind how my father once said that he sowed coppers and reaped crowns. Then we had Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Louis Philippe. Things still went on; we had enough to eat, and couldn't complain. And now we've got Napoleon III., and things weren't so bad, either, up to last year. Only——"
He meant to break off, but the words forced their way.
"Only, what the odds does it make to Rose and me, their liberty and their equality? Are we any the fatter for it, after toiling and moiling for fifty years?"
Then, in a few slow and hesitating words, he unwittingly summed up the whole of this tale. The soil so long tilled for the lord's benefit by the cudgelled and naked slave, whose skin was not even his own—the soil, fertilised by his efforts, passionately loved and desired during close constant intimacy, like another man's wife, whom one tends, embraces, but must not possess—the soil, after centuries of such longing torment, at length taken full possession of, becoming one's own, a love-dalliance and life-spring. This desire of ages, this hope constantly delayed, explained the peasant's love for his field, his passion for land, for the utmost quantity possible, for the loamy soil, palpable to the touch, and poiseable in the palm of the hand. And yet the indifference and ingratitude of this earth! Worship it as you would, it never warmed nor produced one grain the more. Too much rain rotted the seeds, hail ravaged the green wheat, a thunderstorm laid the stalks low, two months' drought shrivelled the ears: and what with devouring insects, nipping frosts, cattle plagues, and leprosies of noxious weeds, everything conspired to bring ruin; the struggle was a daily one, every mistake a danger, one's faculties were ever at full stretch. Surely he had never hung back; had worked body and soul, and had maddened to find his toil insufficient. He had withered his sinews, had withheld nothing of himself from this soil that, after having barely fed him, left him wretched, unsated, ashamed of his senile impotence, to seek the arms of another, without so much as a pitying thought for those poor bones of his that would soon be earth.
"And that's where it is!" went on the old fellow. "In youth we're always hard at it; and, having contrived with great difficulty to make both ends meet, we find ourselves old, and have to quit. Isn't it so, Rose?"
The mother bent her trembling head. Great heaven, yes! She, too, had worked harder than a man, for certain. Rising before the rest of the household, getting the meals, sweeping, scouring, wearing herself out over a thousand duties—the cows, the pigs, the baking—and always the last in bed. She must have had a strong constitution not to have broken down altogether, and her only reward was to have lived her life. One got nothing but wrinkles, and one was lucky if, after pinching and screwing, after going to bed in the dark and putting up with bread and water, one saved just enough to keep the wolf from the door in one's old age.
"All the same," resumed Fouan, "we mustn't complain. I've heard tell there are districts where the land gives a deal more trouble. Thus, in Le Perche, there's nought but flintstones. In La Beauce, the ground is still soft, and only wants good, steady work. But it's spoiling. It's certainly less fertile than formerly, and fields that once gave crops of seven quarters now yield little more than five. And for a year past the prices have been going down. They say that corn is coming in from savage parts. There's some mischief brewing—a crisis, as they say. Is misfortune ever at an end? This universal suffrage, now, it don't bring meat to the pot, does it? The land tax weighs us down, they keep on taking our children away to fight. It's not a bit of use having revolutions, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, and a peasant always remains a peasant."