THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT i8i 



woman has made, to a jest at the expense of the weaker : 

 of the hunchback unable to lift his load, the cripple they 

 have knocked over, or the idiot whom they make their butt. 



" I have studied these people for many years. We are 

 in Normandy ; the soil is rich and easily tilled. Around 

 this stack of corn there is rather more comfort than one 

 would usually associate with a scene of this kind. The 

 result is that most of the men, and many of the women, 

 are alcoholic. Another poison also, which I need not name, 

 corrodes the race. To that, to the alcohol, are due the 

 children whom you see there : the dwarf, the one with the 

 hare-lip, the others who are knock-kneed, scrofulous, imbecile. 

 All of them, men and women, young and old, have the 

 ordinary vices of the peasant. They are brutal, suspicious, 

 grasping, and envious ; hypocrites, liars, and slanderers ; in- 

 clined to petty, illicit profits, mean interpretations, and 

 coarse flattery of the stronger. Necessity brings them to- 

 gether, and compels them to help each other ; but the 

 secret wish of every individual is to harm his neighbour 

 as soon as this can be done without danger to himself. 

 The one substantial pleasure of the village is procured by 

 the sorrows of others. Should a great disaster befall one 

 of them, it will long be the subject of secret, delighted 

 comment among the rest. Every man watches his fellow, 

 is jealous of him, detests and despises him. While they 

 are poor, they hate their masters with a boiling and pent-up 

 hatred because of the harshness and avarice these last dis- 

 play ; should they in their turn have servants, they profit by 

 their own experience of servitude to reveal a harshness and 

 avarice greater even than that from which they have suffered. 



