The fields, as we swept rapidly past them, were as bathed in peace as
when we had left them; there was even a more voluptuous content abroad:
for the twilight was wrapping about the landscape its poppied dusk of
gloom and shadow. Above, the birds were swirling in sweeping circles,
raining down the ecstasy of their night-song; still above, far beyond
them, across a zenith pure, transparent, ineffably pink, illumined
wisps of clouds were trailing their scarf-like shapes. It was a scene
of beatific peace. Across the fields came the sound of a distant
bell. It was the _Angelus_. The ploughmen stopped to doff their hats,
the women to bend their heads in prayer.

And in our ears, louder than the vibrations of the hamlet bell, louder
than the bird-notes and the tumult of the voluptuous insect whirr,
there rang the thud, thud of cruel blows falling on quivering human
flesh.

The curtain that hid the life of the peasant-farmer had indeed been
lifted.




CHAPTER X.

ERNESTINE.


"Ah, mesdames, what will you have? The French peasant is like that.
When he is in a rage nothing stops him--he beats anything, everything;