Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/81

Rh indifferent to the melody or rhythm, scraped or ground out, the wenches always dance the same clog-dance, and their voices bray out monotonously the same eternal chorus:

"To the country of roses we wend etc."

To day the serfs are the lords and the poor are the rich.

A whole year's wages resounds against their knee in a pocket as deep as a corn-drill.

Day of good cheer; Fair-day revolutionising the patient priests of the soil! Warm mornings that hatch idylls: stormy evenings that stir up bloodshed!

It is not without reason that the police, from a distance, watch the proceedings of the "Roselanders."

The gendarmes are pale and twist nerously their moustaches, for, as the evening advances, and the time of reaction comes along, these savage and jealous peasants are often the cause of blood-spilling. These goodfellows, drinking freely with every comer, are ready, for a mere nothing, to throw pewter pots at each other's skulls, and to tear each other into rags like so many bantam-cocks. By dint of embracing his neighbour, the demonstrative gossip winds up by pressing him so tightly to his heart as to