The thrashing machine had been set up on the public square, and all along the last mile before entering the village we met great loads of wheat and oats, drawn by huge white oxen, who in turn were led by what seemed to me to be very small boys. The latter, stick in hand, walked in front of their beasts, and swelling their youthful voices would intone a kind of litany which the animals apparently understood and obeyed.
The brilliant noonday sun shone down and bathed everything in gold.
In the shadow of the little church the engine, attended by two white-bearded men, churned along, from time to time sending forth a shrill whistle. Women with bandana handkerchiefs tied down closely about their heads, unloaded the carts, and lifting the heavy sheaves in their brawny arms, would carry them to the machine, where others, relieving them, would spread them out and guide them into the aperture.
Two handsome girls that might have served as models for goddesses stood, pitch-fork in hand, removing the chaff. The breeze blowing through it would catch the wisps and send them dancing in the air, while the great generous streams of golden grain flowing from the machine seemed like rivers of moulten metal.
The children and tiny babies lay tucked away in the straw, sound asleep beneath a giant elm that shaded one corner of the square. Now and again a woman would leave her companions and wiping the perspiration from her brow, approach this humble cradle, lift her infant in her arms, and seeking a secluded spot, give it suckle.
I cannot tell how long I stood watching this wonderful rustic spectacle, so rich in tone and colouring, so magnificent in its simplicity, so harmonious in movement. There was no undue noise—every motion seemed regulated, the work accomplished without haste but with an impressive thoroughness. Here then was the very source of the country's vitality. Elsewhere the war might crush and destroy lives, cities and possessions, but this was the bubbling spring-head from whence gushed forth, unrestrained, the generative forces; stronger than war, stronger than death, life defiantly persistent. And I was seized with an immense pride, an unlimited admiration for these noble, simple women of France who had had the courage to set forth such a challenge!
For it is the women who have done it, of that there can be no doubt.
