The Devils Pool | Page 3

powerful satires upon the evils of their age and their country. They are
immortal works, historical pages of unquestionable value; we do not
undertake, therefore, to deny artists the right to probe the wounds of
society and lay them bare before our eyes; but is there nothing better to
be done to-day than to depict the terrifying and the threatening? In this
literature of mysteries of iniquity, which talent and imagination have
made fashionable, we prefer the mild, attractive figures to the villains
for dramatic effect. The former may undertake and effect conversions,
the others cause fear, and fear does not cure egoism, but increases it.
We believe that the mission of art is a mission of sentiment and love,
that the novel of to-day ought to replace the parable and the fable of
simpler times, and that the artist has a broader and more poetic task
than that of suggesting a few prudential and conciliatory measures to
lessen the alarm his pictures arouse. His object should be to make the
objects of his solicitude lovable, and I would not reproach him for

flattering them a little, in case of need. Art is not a study of positive
reality, it is a quest for ideal truth, and the Vicar of Wakefield was a
more useful and healthy book for the mind than the Paysan Perverti or
the Liaisons Dangereuses.
Reader, pardon these reflections, and deign to accept them by way of
preface. There will be no other to the little tale I propose to tell you,
and it will be so short and so simple that I felt that I must apologize
beforehand by telling you what I think of terrifying tales.
I allowed myself to be drawn into this digression apropos of a
ploughman. It is the story of a ploughman that I set out to tell you, and
will tell you forthwith.

II
THE PLOUGHING
I had been gazing for a long time and with profound sadness at
Holbein's ploughman, and I was walking in the fields, musing upon
country-life and the destiny of the husbandman. Doubtless it is a
depressing thing to consume one's strength and one's life driving the
plough through the bosom of the jealous earth, which yields the
treasures of its fecundity only under duress, when a bit of the blackest
and coarsest bread at the end of the day is the only reward and the only
profit of such laborious toil. The wealth that covers the ground, the
crops, the fruit, the proud cattle fattening on the long grass, are the
property of a few, and the instruments of fatigue and slavery of the
majority. As a general rule, the man of leisure does not love, for
themselves, the fields, or the meadows, or the spectacle of nature, or
the superb beasts that are to be converted into gold pieces for his use.
The man of leisure comes to the country in search of a little air and
health, then returns to the city to spend the fruit of his vassal's toil.
The man of toil, for his part, is too crushed, too wretched, and too
frightened concerning the future, to enjoy the beauties of the landscape

and the charms of rustic life. To him also the golden fields, the lovely
meadows, the noble animals, represent bags of crowns, of which he
will have only a paltry share, insufficient for his needs, and yet those
cursed bags must be filled every year to satisfy the master and pay for
the privilege of living sparingly and wretchedly on his domain.
And still nature is always young and beautiful and generous. She sheds
poetry and beauty upon all living things, upon all the plants that are left
to develop in their own way. Nature possesses the secret of happiness,
and no one has ever succeeded in wresting it from her. He would be the
most fortunate of men who, possessing the science of his craft and
working with his hands, deriving happiness and liberty from the
exercise of his intelligent strength, should have time to live in the heart
and the brain, to understand his work, and to love the work of God. The
artist has enjoyment of that sort in contemplating and reproducing the
beauties of Nature; but, when he sees the suffering of the men who
people this paradise called the earth, the just, kind-hearted artist is
grieved in the midst of his enjoyment. Where the mind, heart, and arms
work in concert under the eye of Providence, true happiness would be
found, and a holy harmony would exist between the munificence of
God and the delights of the human soul. Then, instead of piteous,
ghastly Death walking in his furrow, whip in hand, the painter of
allegories could place beside the ploughman a