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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Devil's Pool, by George Sand This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Devil's Pool Author: George Sand Illustrator: E. Abot Translator: Jane Minot Sedgwick And Ellery Sedgwick Release Date: July 4, 2007 [EBook #21993] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEVIL'S POOL *** Produced by David Widger THE DEVIL'S POOL By George Sand Translated From The French By Jane Minot Sedgwick And Ellery Sedgwick With An Etching By E. Abot 1901 THE DEVIL'S POOL THE AUTHOR TO THE READER _A la sueur de ton visaige, Tu gagnerais ta pauvre vie. Apres long travail et usaige, Voicy la mort qui te convie._ * THIS quaint old French verse, written under one of Holbein's pictures, is profoundly melancholy. The engraving represents a laborer driving his plow through the middle of a field. Beyond him stretches a vast horizon, dotted with wretched huts; the sun is sinking behind the hill. It is the end of a hard day's work. The peasant is old, bent, and clothed in rags. He is urging onward a team of four thin and exhausted horses; the plowshare sinks into a stony and ungrateful soil. One being only is active and alert in this scene of toil and sorrow. It is a fantastic creature. A skeleton armed with a whip, who acts as plowboy to the old laborer, and running along through the furrow beside the terrified horses, goads them on. This is the specter Death, whom Holbein has introduced allegorically into that series of religious and philosophic subjects, at once melancholy and grotesque, entitled "The Dance of Death." * In toil and sorrow thou shalt eat The bitter bread of poverty. After the burden and the heat, Lo! it is Death who calls for thee. In this collection, or rather this mighty composition, where Death, who plays his part on every page, is the connecting link and predominating thought, Holbein has called up kings, popes, lovers, gamesters, drunkards, nuns, courtesans, thieves, warriors, monks, Jews, and travelers,--all the people of his time and our own; and everywhere the specter Death is among them, taunting, thr
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