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