Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/265

Rh beef, tasty meat, prolific wheat, was inundating, from over the sea, the markets of Europe, submerging the ridiculous flora and fauna torn from our pasturage and fallow fields. No! rather than wait for the coupde-grace, the harvesters of decadent Europe were leaving for the plethoric continent.

And, to complete the defeat and transform into nomads the hitherto underacinated peasants, recruiters with the gift of the gab, adroit and insinuating, went from market town to market town, visited the inns on the days of fairs and sales, and took advantage of the poor fellows' after-taste and lassitude on Sunday evenings, or on the mornings following a kermess, to excite their minds with troubling mirages of prosperity. In order the better to hearken to the honeyed voiced tempter and his glittering gabble, cowherds and haymakers, horny and innocent, their mouths wide open, their eyes ecstatic, allowed their clay pipes to go out. The electricity of wonder played upon their tanned and shiny skins, tickled their ingenuous feelings to the marrow, stupefied their cunning senses, and held them breathless, hanging upon the lips of the rascal from which fell, like fireworks, descriptions more dazzling and more fiery than the chromos on a mercer's bale or ballad-monger's screen.

A swarm of these jobbers recruited from among the lowest class of procurers had pounced upon the country like jackals upon a battlefield. They had the suspicious manner, the air of familiarity, the gawky movements of cheap peddlers which would have set less simple minds against them.

Thus, they examined the sturdiest of the laborers, inspected them from head to foot with an almost embarassing persistence, going so far as to pass their