The Devils Pool | Page 2

serious survey of
their surroundings, take pleasure in painting misery, the sordidness of
poverty, and the dunghill of Lazarus. This may belong to the domain of
art and philosophy; but by depicting poverty as so hideous, so degraded,
and sometimes so vicious and criminal, do they gain their end, and is
that end as salutary as they would wish? We dare not pronounce
judgment. They may answer that they terrify the unjust rich man by
pointing out to him the yawning pit that lies beneath the frail covering
of wealth; just as in the time of the Dance of Death, they showed him
his gaping grave, and Death standing ready to fold him in an impure
embrace. Now, they show him the thief breaking open his doors, and
the murderer stealthily watching his sleep. We confess we cannot
understand how we can reconcile him to the human nature he despises,
or make him sensible of the sufferings of the poor wretch whom he
dreads, by showing him this wretch in the guise of the escaped convict
or the nocturnal burglar. The hideous phantom Death, under the
repulsive aspect in which he has been represented by Holbein and his
predecessors, gnashing his teeth and playing the fiddle, has been
powerless to convert the wicked and console their victims. And does
not our literature employ the same means as the artists of the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance?
The revelers of Holbein fill their glasses in a frenzy to dispel the idea of
Death, who is their cup-bearer, though they do not see him. The unjust
rich of our own day demand cannon and barricades to drive out the idea
of an insurrection of the people which Art shows them as slowly
working in the dark, getting ready to burst upon the State. The Church
of the Middle Ages met the terrors of the great of the earth with the sale
of indulgences. The government of to-day soothes the uneasiness of the
rich by exacting from them large sums for the support of policemen,
jailors, bayonets, and prisons.
Albert Durer, Michael Angelo, Holbein, Callot, and Goya have made
powerful satires on the evils of their times and countries, and their
immortal works are historical documents of unquestionable value. We
shall not refuse to artists the right to probe the wounds of society and
lay them bare to our eyes; but is the only function of art still to threaten

and appall? In the literature of the mysteries of iniquity, which talent
and imagination have brought into fashion, we prefer the sweet and
gentle characters, which can attempt and effect conversions, to the
melodramatic villains, who inspire terror; for terror never cures
selfishness, but increases it.
We believe that the mission of art is a mission of sentiment and love,
that the novel of to-day should take the place of the parable and the
fable of early times, and that the artist has a larger and more poetic task
than that of suggesting certain prudential and conciliatory measures for
the purpose of diminishing the fright caused by his pictures. His aim
should be to render attractive the objects he has at heart, and, if
necessary, I have no objection to his embellishing them a little. Art is
not the study of positive reality, but the search for ideal truth, and the
"Vicar of Wakefield" was a more useful and healthy book than the
"Paysan Perverti," or the "Liaisons Dangereuses."
Forgive these reflections of mine, kind reader, and let them stand as a
preface, for there will be no other to the little story I am going to relate
to you. My tale is to be so short and so simple, that I felt obliged to
make you my apologies for it beforehand, by telling you what I think of
the literature of terror.
I have allowed myself to be drawn into this digression for the sake of a
laborer; and it is the story of a laborer which I have been meaning to
tell you, and which I shall now tell you at once.

I -- The Tillage of the Soil
I HAD just been looking long and sadly at Holbein's plowman, and was
walking through the fields, musing on rustic life and the destiny of the
husbandman. It is certainly tragic for him to spend his days and his
strength delving in the jealous earth, that so reluctantly yields up her
rich treasures when a morsel of coarse black bread, at the end of the
day's work, is the sole reward and profit to be reaped from such
arduous toil. The wealth of the soil, the harvests, the fruits, the splendid

cattle that grow sleek and fat in the luxuriant grass, are the property of
the few, and but instruments of the drudgery