The Devils Pool | Page 5

hardly
sufficient to accomplish.
A child of six or seven years, as beautiful as an angel, with a lamb's
fleece covering his shoulders, over his blouse, so that he resembled the
little Saint John the Baptist of the painters of the Renaissance, was
trudging along in the furrow beside the plough and pricking the sides of
the oxen with a long, light stick, the end of which was armed with a
dull goad. The proud beasts quivered under the child's small hand, and
made the yokes and the straps about their foreheads groan, jerking the
plough violently forward. When the ploughshare struck a root, the
driver shouted in a resonant voice, calling each beast by his name, but
rather to soothe than to excite them; for the oxen, annoyed by the
sudden resistance, started forward, digging their broad forked feet into
the ground, and would have turned aside and dragged the plough across
the field, had not the young man held the four leaders in check with
voice and goad, while the child handled the other four. He, too, shouted,
poor little fellow, in a voice which he tried to render terrible, but which

remained as sweet as his angelic face. The whole picture was beautiful
in strength and in grace: the landscape, the man, the child, the oxen
under the yoke; and, despite the mighty struggle in which the earth was
conquered, there was a feeling of peace and profound tranquillity
hovering over everything. When the obstacle was surmounted and the
team resumed its even, solemn progress, the ploughman, whose
pretended violence was only to give his muscles a little practice and his
vitality an outlet, suddenly resumed the serenity of simple souls and
cast a contented glance upon his child, who turned to smile at him.
Then the manly voice of the young paterfamilias would strike up the
solemn, melancholy tune which the ancient tradition of the province
transmits, not to all ploughmen without distinction, but to those most
expert in the art of arousing and sustaining the spirit of working-cattle.
That song, whose origin was perhaps held sacred, and to which
mysterious influences seem to have been attributed formerly, is reputed
even to the present day to possess the virtue of keeping up the courage
of those animals, of soothing their discontent, and of whiling away the
tedium of their long task. It is not enough to have the art of driving
them so as to cut the furrow in an absolutely straight line, to lighten
their labor by raising the share or burying it deeper in the ground: a
man is not a perfect ploughman if he cannot sing to his cattle, and that
is a special science which requires special taste and powers.
To speak accurately, this song is only a sort of recitative, broken off
and taken up again at pleasure. Its irregular form and its intonations,
false according to the rules of musical art, make it impossible to
reproduce. But it is a fine song none the less, and so entirely
appropriate to the nature of the work it accompanies, to the gait of the
ox, to the tranquillity of rural scenes, to the simple manners of the men
who sing it, that no genius unfamiliar with work in the fields could
have invented it, and no singer other than a cunning ploughman of that
region would know how to render it. At the time of year when there is
no other work and no other sign of activity in the country than the
ploughing, that sweet and powerful chant rises like the voice of the
breeze, which it resembles somewhat in its peculiar pitch. The final
word of each phrase, sustained at incredible length, and with
marvellous power of breath, ascends a fourth of a tone, purposely

making a discord. That is barbarous, perhaps, but the charm of it is
indescribable, and when one is accustomed to hear it, one cannot
conceive of any other song at that time and in those localities that
would not disturb the harmony.
It happened, therefore, that I had before my eyes a picture in striking
contrast with Holbein's, although it might be a similar scene. Instead of
a sad old man, a cheerful young man; instead of a team of thin, sorry
horses, two yoke of four sturdy, spirited cattle; instead of Death, a
lovely child; instead of an image of despair and a suggestion of
destruction, a spectacle of energetic action and a thought of happiness.
Then it was that the French quatrain:
"A la sueur de ton visaige," etc.,
and the O fortunatos----agricolas of Virgil, came to my mind
simultaneously, and when I saw that handsome pair, the man and the
child, performing a grand and solemn task under such poetic conditions,
and with so