Plough-horses, mighty
of limb, browse in the long stables. The dial-hand on the clock
waits for some better hour. Out on the plain, where hot sweat
trickles into men's eyes, and the spade goes in deep and comes up
slowly, perhaps the peasant may feel a movement of joy at his heart
when he thinks that these spacious chimneys are now cold, which have
so often blazed and flickered upon gay folk at supper, while he and
his hollow-eyed children watched through the night with empty bellies
and cold feet. And perhaps, as he raises his head and sees the
forest lying like a coast-line of low hills along the sea-level of
the plain, perhaps forest and chateau hold no unsimilar place in his
affections.
If the chateau was my lord's, the forest was my lord the king's;
neither of them for this poor Jacques. If he thought to eke out his
meagre way of life by some petty theft of wood for the fire, or for a
new roof-tree, he found himself face to face with a whole department,
from the Grand Master of the Woods and Waters, who was a high-born
lord, down to the common sergeant, who was a peasant like himself,
and wore stripes or a bandoleer by way of uniform.
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