" _Voyez donc la simplicite, vous autres, voyez le ciel
et les champs, et les arbres, et les paysans, surtout dans ce qu'ils ont
de bon et de vrai._
The introduction to _La Mare au Diable_ will give us what we want.
George Sand has been looking at an engraving of Holbein's _Laborer._
[321] An old thick-set peasant, in rags, is driving his plough in the
midst of a field. All around spreads a wild landscape, dotted with a few
poor huts. The sun is setting behind a hill; the day of toil is nearly
over. It has been a hard one; the ground is rugged and stony, the
laborer's horses are but skin and bone, weak and exhausted. There is but
one alert figure, the skeleton Death, who with a whip skips nimbly along
at the horses' side and urges the team. Under the picture is a quotation
in old French, to the effect that after the laborer's life of travail
and service, in which he has to gain his bread by the sweat of his brow,
here comes Death to fetch him away. And from so rude a life does Death
take him, says George Sand, that Death is hardly unwelcome; and in
another composition by Holbein, where men of almost every condition,--
popes, sovereigns, lovers, gamblers, monks, soldiers,--are taunted with
their fear of Death and do indeed see his approach with terror, Lazarus
alone is easy and composed, and sitting on his dunghill at the rich
man's door, tells Death that he does not dread him.
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