Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/263

Rh The same pioneers who never, never would have changed their labor, no matter how fruitless and painful, for a lucrative position in the city, suffered overnight the vertigo of exodus and exiled themselves in masses.

How many, however, of these inveterate dwellers on the land, their bodies bent almost double over the bare earth, more obdurate at home than anywhere else, undergoing with fanatical voluptuousness the crafty effects of atmosphere and climate, their plump hovels sticking to plowed fields as tawny as their breeches, had formerly suffered from a sharp nostalgia when conscription had brutally transplanted them into the tumultuous and turbulent city, deprived them of their laborer's garb to harness them in military livery, detained them in putrid barracks far from their balsamic native fields, or spewed them forth, on certain days, confused and dreary, into the snare-ridden street? What desolation; what desires for the wretched homeland! How many hours there were in which to ruminate trifling memories!

Ah! the stealthy homecoming of the soldier; the minutes exactly calculated, the road travelled at a fugitive's pace!

The day-long furlough, the short respite employed to pass one hour, but one brief hour, at the natal hearth; the unexpected apparitions conjured up on the hasty trip, breathless and panting like a hunted tramp; only time enough to go and come, to put foot upon the delicious home fields, to embrace the old folk and the loved one, to again breathe the odor of the land in the emollient humidity of twilight!

And now these same hardened rustics, seeing themselves confronted by a sinister dilemma, filled with