you?" she asked.

The stranger covered his blushing face with both hands and sobbed forth:

"A woman, an unhappy woman, who loves, who is beside herself, who is
ready to die for him she loves."

CHAPTER IX.

THE PLAGUE.

There is a mighty Potentate among us here below, the secrets of whose
existence are still unknown to our wise men, although they have a lot to
tell us about her power; a Potentate whom they have not yet taught us to
fear, or else everybody would not still be turning to her full of hope.

This Potentate is not Hell, but the Earth.

Yes, the good, the blessed, the peaceful Earth. She is not violent like
the other elements, fire, water, and air. She calmly allows herself to
be trampled underfoot; lets us make great wounds in her; lets us load
her broad back with cities and towns; crush her bones by driving deep
mining-shafts into her--and for all that she allows us who plague her
so, to live and multiply in the midst of her dust.

Has anyone ever inquired of her: Oh, my sovereign mistress! thou good
and blessed Earth! art thou pleased with the deeds we do upon thee? Can
it please thee, perchance, to see us root up thy beauteous fresh woods
from off thee, leaving thy tormented body all naked in the blaze of the
Sun? Can it please thee to see us constrain thy flowing rivers within
narrow basins, dry up thy lakes and leave thee athirst? Can it please
thee to see us tear open thy body, break it up into little fragments,
and compel these fragments to produce meat and drink for us? Can it
please thee to see us drench thy flowery meads with blood and hide away
the bones of our dead in thy bosom? Can it please thee that we live upon
thee here, and bless and curse thee that thou mayest nourish us, and
rack our brains as to how we may best multiply our species in those
portions of the earth where men are still but few?

Nevertheless, the Earth patiently endures all this ill-treatment. Only
now and then does she tremble with a fleeting horror, and then the
palaces heaped upon her totter to their very foundations. Yet are there
any among us who understand the hint?

And then for centuries afterwards she gives not a single sign of life.
She puts up with her naughty children as every good mother does. She
overlooks and hides away their faults and endures in their stead the
visitations of Heaven. She is never angry with them, she never punishes
them. She cherishes and nourishes them, and expects no gra