" returned to my mind, and seeing
this lovely child and his father, under such poetic conditions, and with
so much grace and strength, accomplish a task full of such grand
and solemn suggestions, I was conscious of deep pity and involuntary
respect. Happy the peasant of the fields! Yes, and so too should I be
in his place, if my arm and voice could be endowed with sudden strength,
and I could help to make Nature fruitful, and sing of her gifts, without
ceasing to see with my eyes or understand with my brain harmonious
colors and sounds, delicate shades and graceful outlines; in short, the
mysterious beauty of all things. And above all, if my heart continued
to beat in concert with the divine sentiment that presided over the
immortal sublimity of creation.

But, alas! this man has never understood the mystery of beauty; this
child will never understand it. God forbid that I should not think them
superior to the animals which are subject to them, or that they have not
moments of rapturous insight that soothe their toil and lull their cares
to sleep. I see the seal of the Lord upon their noble brows, for they
were born to inherit the earth far more truly than those who have bought
and paid for it. The proof that they feel this is that they cannot be
exiled with impunity, that they love the soil they have watered with
their tears, and that the true peasant dies of homesickness under the
arms of a soldier far from his native field. But he lacks some of my
enjoyments, those pure delights which should be his by right, as a
workman in that immense temple which the sky only is vast enough
to embrace. He lacks the consciousness of his sentiment. Those who
condemned him to slavery from his mother's womb, being unable to rob him
of his vague dreams, took away from him the power of reflection.

Yet, imperfect being that he is, sentenced to eternal childhood, he is
nobler than the man in whom knowledge has stifled feeling. Do not set
yourselves above him, you who believe yourselves invested with a lawful
and inalienable right to rule over him, for your terrible mistake shows
that your brain has destroyed your heart, and that you are the blindest
and most incomplete of men! I love the simplicity of his soul more than
the false lights of yours; and if I had to narrate the story of his
life, the pleasure I should take in bringing out the tender and touching
side of it would be greater than your merit in painting the degradation
and con