WHEN he inspected the uncultivated land, Batiste told himself that here he would have work for some time.
Nor did he feel dismayed over the prospect. He was an energetic, enterprising man, accustomed to working hard to earn a livelihood, and there was hard work here, and plenty of it, furthermore, he consoled himself by remembering that he had been even worse off.
His life had been a continuous change of profession, always within the circle of rural poverty; but though he had changed his occupation every year, he had never succeeded in obtaining for his family the modest comfort which was his only aspiration.
When he first became acquainted with his wife, he was a millhand in the neighbourhood of Sagunto. He was then working like a dog (as he expressed it) to provide for his family; and the Lord rewarded his labours by sending him every year a child, all sons,—beautiful creatures who seemed to have been born with teeth, judging by the haste with which they deserted the mother's breast, and began to beg continually for bread.
The result was that in his search for higher wages, he had to give up the mill and become a teamster.
But bad luck pursued him. And yet no one tended the live stock and watched the road as well as he: though nearly dead from fatigue, he had never like his companions dared to sleep in the wagon, letting the beasts, guided by their instinct, find their own way: wakeful at all hours, he always walked beside the nag ahead to avoid the holes and the bad places. Nevertheless, if a wagon upset, it was always his; if an animal fell ill of the rains, it was of course one of Batiste's, in spite of the paternal care with which he hastened to cover the flanks of the horses with trappings of sackcloth, as soon as a few drops had fallen.
During some years of tiresome wanderings over highroads of the province, eating poorly, sleeping in the open, and suffering the torment of passing entire months away from his family, whom he adored with the concentrated affection of a rough and silent man, Batiste experienced only losses, and saw his position getting worse and worse.
His nags died, and he had to go into debt to buy others; the profit that he should have had from the continuous carrying of bags of skin bulged out with wine or oil, would disappear in the hands of hucksters and owners of carts, until the moment arrived when, seeing his impending ruin, he gave up the occupation.
Then he took some land near Sagunto; arid fields, red and eternally thirsty, in which the century-old carob-trees writhed their hollow trunks, and the olive-trees raised their round and dusty heads.
His life was one continuous battle with the drought, an incessant gazing at the sky; whenever a small dark cloud showed itself on the horizon, he trembled with fear.