The Earth Read online

  He tackled his pigeon wing again as he went on:

  ‘You know that your opponent Monsieur Rochefontaine, the owner of the building firm at Châteaudun, is a fervent free trader?’

  They talked for a moment about this opponent, an industrialist who employed twelve hundred workmen, a tall, energetic, intelligent young man, very wealthy, who would have been happy to support the Emperor but was so offended at not being backed by the préfet that he had insisted on standing as an independent. He had no chance at all, for the peasants treated anyone who was not on the winning side as a public enemy.

  ‘Yes, damn it,’ Monsieur de Chédeville said, ‘all he wants is for bread to be dirt cheap so that he can pay his workers less.’

  The farmer, who was about to pour himself another glass of claret, put the bottle back on the table.

  ‘That's the dreadful thing,’ he exclaimed. ‘On the one hand we farmers need to sell our corn at an economic price, and on the other the industrialists want to push prices down so that they can pay lower wages. It's open warfare and how's it going to end, tell me that?’

  And indeed it was the frightening problem of the day, an antagonism that was pulling the framework of society apart. The question was quite beyond the mental powers of our aging ladies' man, who contented himself with nodding his head with an evasive gesture.

  Hourdequin filled his glass and emptied it in one gulp.

  ‘There's no end to it… If the farmer gets a good price for his wheat, the worker starves, if the worker gets enough to eat, the peasant goes hungry. So what, then? I don't know, let's gobble each other up!’

  Then, with his elbows on the table, he launched fiercely into his pet subject and, as he unburdened himself, from a certain ironic vibration in his voice you could detect his secret contempt for this landowner who not only did not farm himself but knew nothing about the land which provided his livelihood.

  ‘You asked me to supply you with a few facts for your speech. Well, first of all, it's your fault if La Chamade is losing money. Your tenant Robiquet is letting things slide because his lease is coming to an end and he suspects that you intend to increase it. You never put in an appearance, they treat you as a joke and they rob you, it's absolutely natural. In addition, there's a simpler reason why you're going to rack and ruin: it's because we're all going that way, the whole of Beauce is becoming exhausted. Yes, our fertile Beauce, the all-providing mother, the granary of France!’

  He went on. For example, in his youth, the Perche, on the other side of the Loir, was a poor area, thinly cultivated, with hardly any wheat, and its inhabitants used to come over to Cloyes, Châteaudun and Bonneval as hired hands for the harvest. Today, thanks to the constant rise in labour costs, the Perche was prospering and would soon have overtaken Beauce, apart from the fact that it was growing rich through breeding livestock, so that the markets of Mondoubleau, Saint-Calais and Courtalain provided the lowland plain with horses, cattle and pigs, while Beauce made its living from breeding sheep. Two years ago, when they had been decimated by the pest, there had been a terrible crisis, and if the disease had continued Beauce would have been destroyed.

  And he launched out on his own story, his thirty-year-long struggle with the land which had left him poor. He'd always been short of capital, he'd never been able to improve some of his land as he would have liked, the only thing that didn't cost too much was marling the soil and nobody bothered to do it, apart from himself. It was the same with fertilizers, people only used farmyard manure, which was inadequate; all his neighbours laughed at him when they saw him trying out chemical fertilizers, whose poor quality, in fact, often justified their laughter. In spite of his own ideas on crop rotation, he had been forced to adopt the local triennial system, without any fallow period, ever since the practice of artificial meadowland and the cultivation of fodder crops had spread. Only one machine, the threshing machine, was beginning to be accepted. Everywhere you could see the deadly, inevitable inroads of habit and inertia; and if he, progressive and intelligent as he was, was affected by this, what would the thickheaded, completely conservative small landowners do? Any peasant would sooner starve than pick up a handful of his soil and take it to be analysed by a chemist who would tell him what it lacked or what it had too much of, what fertilizer it needed, what crop would do well on it. For centuries the peasant had been robbing the soil without ever a thought of putting something back in, except the manure of his two cows and a horse, and sparingly at that; the rest was left to chance, the seed cast in any old field and sprouting at random, and if it didn't sprout it was God who got the blame. If the day were to come at last when the peasant farmer was properly educated and adopted rational, scientific methods of agriculture, then production would double. Until then, in his ignorance and pigheadedness and without a penn'orth of capital, he would destroy the good earth. And this was why Beauce, that age-old granary of France, flat and waterless, whose only wealth was its wheat, was dying of exhaustion, inch by inch, tired of being bled dry and feeding a population of idiots.

  ‘Everything's going to buggery,’ he exclaimed coarsely. ‘The next generation will see the land go bankrupt. Did you know that these days our small farmers, who used to pinch and scrape to save enough to buy a bit of land that they had had their eye on for years, now invest in stocks and shares, Spanish or Portuguese or even Mexican? And they wouldn't risk a five-franc piece to improve a couple of acres of land. They've lost confidence, the old men trudge along in their ruts like broken-down animals while the young men and girls think only of getting away from looking after cows or getting their hands dirty with a plough and go off as soon as they can to the towns… But the worst thing is that education, do you remember, that wonderful education that was going to be our salvation? Well, all it does is to speed up this emigration and depopulation of the countryside by making children stupidly conceited and obsessed with material comfort. Take Rognes, for example, they've got a schoolmaster, a man called Lequeu, a country lad full of resentment against the land where he might have ended up as a farm labourer. Well, how can he possibly make his pupils like their lot when every day he calls them savages and barbarians and tells them to go back to their dung-pit with all the contempt of someone with a bit of book-learning? The cure, yes, by heavens, the cure of course, would be to have other kinds of school, a practical education of graduated courses in agriculture… There you are, monsieur le député, there's a fact for you. Make a point of it, our salvation can perhaps come from proper schooling, if there's still time!’

  Monsieur de Chédeville, not paying much attention and uneasy at this massive and violent display of information, hurriedly replied:

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  And as the maid brought in the dessert, a cream cheese and fruit, leaving the kitchen door wide open, he caught a glimpse of Jacqueline's pretty profile and bent forward, winking and fidgeting to attract the attention of such an agreeable young woman; and then he said in his carefully modulated voice, that of a former lady-killer:

  ‘But you've said nothing about the smallholder?’

  He trotted out all the fashionable ideas: the smallholder, born of the Revolution of '89, protected by the law and destined to regenerate agriculture; in a word, everyone becoming a landowner and using his intelligence and energy in the cultivation of his own little plot of land.

  ‘Tell that to the marines!’ said Hourdequin. ‘In the first place, smallholdings existed before the Revolution and to almost the same extent as now. Secondly, there's a lot that can be said about parcelling out land into smallholdings, both for and against.’

  Once again, elbows on table and cracking cherry stones between his teeth, he launched into the details. In Beauce, the smallholding, the estate of less than fifty acres, represented eighty per cent. For some time now almost all the day-labourers, the ones who hired themselves out to the farmers, had been buying up small pieces of land when the big estates were broken up and cultivating them in their spare time. This was, of co
urse, a very good thing because the labourer could now feel he had a stake in the land. And another thing in favour of smallholdings was that it made for better education and gave a man a sense of personal dignity and pride. Finally, it produced proportionately more and of better quality, since the owner devoted all his energies to it. But think of all the disadvantages! First of all, the superior production of the smallholding was the result of excessively hard labour; the father, mother and the children had to kill themselves with work. In addition, the large number of small plots involved a great deal of transport, thus damaging the tracks and paths and increasing the costs of production, apart from wasting time. As for using machines, it would seem impossible when the plots were too small, apart from the disadvantage of making a three-year system of rotation inevitable, something which was certainly scientifically inadvisable because it was illogical to expect two cereal crops, oats and wheat, in succession. In a word, excessive division of the land seemed dangerous, so much so that after passing laws in its favour immediately after the Revolution, in the fear that the big estates might be reconstituted, the situation now was that exchanges of land were being encouraged by giving tax relief on them.

  ‘Listen to me,’ he went on. ‘There's a struggle growing up between large- and small-scale farming and it's getting more acute. Some farmers, like myself, are in favour of large-scale farming because it seems to be in line with scientific progress, with its increasing use of machinery and a large capital turnover… On the other hand there are those who believe only in individual effort and so favour smallholdings, with some sort of miniature farming in mind where everyone produces his own manure and looks after his quarter of an acre, sifting his seeds one by one, giving them the soil they require and then growing each plant separately under cloches… Who's going to win? I'm damned if I can guess! Of course, I realize, as you were saying, that every year big farms go bust all round here and get split up so that they fall into the hands of gangs of ruffians, and so smallholding is certainly gaining ground. I know another case in Rognes, a very curious one, of an old woman who has less than an acre and succeeds in producing a very decent living for herself and her husband, with even a luxury or two. The villagers have nicknamed her Old Ma Poohpooh because she doesn't mind emptying her chamber-pot – and her husband's – over her vegetables, which is a method used by the Chinese, apparently. But it's really not much more than gardening, I can't see cereals growing on plots no bigger than a cabbage-patch; and if the small farmer has got to produce a bit of everything in order to be self-sufficient, what's going to become of the people here, who can only produce wheat if Beauce is cut up into a patchwork? Well, time alone will tell whether the future lies in large-scale or small-scale…’

  He broke off and shouted:

  ‘Have we got to wait all day for our coffee?’

  Then, lighting his pipe, he concluded:

  ‘Unless, of course, they're neither of them going to survive, and they're being killed off at this very minute… You must realize, monsieur le député, that agriculture is on its deathbed and it will die if no one comes to its support. It's being crushed out of existence by taxes, foreign competition, the continual increase in labour costs, the flight of capital into industry and the Stock Exchange. Oh, I know, there's no shortage of promises, everybody's full of them: préfets, ministers, the Emperor… And then the dust settles and nothing happens… Do you want to know the real truth of the matter? Nowadays, any farmer who is keeping his head above water is doing it by spending either his own money or somebody else's. As for me, I've got a little fat to live on, I'm all right. But I know farmers who are borrowing at six per cent while their land is giving them a return of three per cent, at best. Inevitably they'll go under. A farmer who starts borrowing is sunk, he'll not even be left with his shirt. Even the other week one of my neighbours was expelled, the father, mother and four children all thrown onto the street, after the lawyers had gobbled up his cattle, his land and his house. And yet we've been promised an agricultural credit scheme at reasonable rates for years! What's happened to it? It's discouraging even for the hard workers, they're going to ask themselves twice before they give their wives a baby… No, thanks! Another mouth to feed, another poor little wretch who'd be born to starve! When people haven't got enough bread for everyone, they stop having children and the nation goes to pot!’

  Visibly comforted, Monsieur de Chédeville ventured an uneasy smile as he murmured:

  ‘You don't paint a pretty picture.’

  ‘That's true, there are days when I'd chuck up everything,’ Hourdequin replied cheerfully. ‘And these worries have been with me these last thirty years, too… I don't know why I kept on, I should have sold up the farm and tried something else. I suppose it's habit and possibly the hope that things will change. And then there's an insatiable urge, one might as well admit it. Once the land gets you by the short hair, the bitch won't let go. There you are, just look over there, it's probably stupid but I feel consoled when I can see that.’

  He pointed to a silver cup, protected from the flies by a piece of muslin, the first prize in an agricultural show. These agricultural shows where he never failed to win prizes were a constant spur to his vanity and one of the reasons for his persistence. Despite the fact that his guest was obviously tired, he lingered over his coffee; and then, pouring brandy into his cup for the third time, he took out his watch and sprang to his feet.

  ‘Good God! Two o'clock and I've got a meeting of the municipal council!… Yes, it's a question of a road. We're quite happy to pay half but we'd like a government subsidy for the rest.’

  Monsieur de Chédeville, happy at being released, had got up from table:

  ‘Look, I can help you there, I'll get your subsidy for you. Would you like me to take you to Rognes in my gig, since you're in a hurry?’

  ‘Splendid.’

  The vehicle had been left standing in the middle of the yard and Hourdequin went out to have it hitched up. When he came back, the deputy was no longer there and he finally found him in the kitchen. He had pushed open the door and he was standing smiling in front of a beaming Jacqueline and offering her compliments at such close range that their faces were almost touching; the pair of them had sniffed each other out, had come to an understanding and were telling each other so quite plainly with their eyes.

  When Monsieur de Chédeville had climbed into his gig, Jacqueline detained Hourdequin for a moment to whisper in his ear:

  ‘Well? He's nicer than you, he doesn't think I ought to be hidden away!’

  On the way, as the carriage was passing between wheat fields, the farmer came back again to his perpetual concern, the land. Now he started supplying written notes and figures, because for the last few years he had been keeping accounts. In the whole of Beauce there were not three farmers who did this, and the smallholders, the peasant farmers, would shrug their shoulders without even understanding. Yet only by keeping accounts could a clear picture of the situation be obtained, showing which products were showing a profit and which a loss; in addition, it showed the cost price and consequently the sale price. With Hourdequin, every farm-hand, every animal, every crop, even every tool had a page to itself, in two columns, debit and credit, so that he was kept continually informed as to the result of his operations, good or bad.

  ‘At least,’ he said with a guffaw, ‘I can know how I'm being ruined.’

  But he broke off with a muttered oath. For the last few minutes, as the gig was proceeding towards Rognes, he had been trying to see exactly what was happening in the distance, at the roadside. Although it was Sunday, he had sent one of his farm-hands out to toss some lucerne which needed doing urgently, and had provided him with a mechanical tedder of a new type which he had recently acquired. And the unsuspecting farm-hand, failing to recognize his master in the unfamiliar vehicle, was poking fun at his piece of machinery with three villagers whom he had stopped as they were passing by.

  ‘Look at that for a dud article,’ he was sayin
g. ‘It breaks the grass up and poisons it. Three sheep have died as a result of it already, word of honour.’

  The peasants were grinning and examining the tedding machine as if it were a queer, malevolent beast. One of them declared:

  ‘It's all an invention of the devil against us poor folk… What'll our wives do if they're not needed for haymaking?’

  ‘Christ, the farm owners couldn't care less,’ the farm-hand said, kicking the machine. ‘Gee up, dead bones!’

  Hourdequin had heard all this. Thrusting his body half out of the gig, he shouted:

  ‘Get back to the farm, Zéphyrin, you're sacked!’

  The farm-hand stood gaping and the three peasants went off with derisive laughter, making loud insulting remarks.

  ‘There you are!’ said Hourdequin, falling back into his seat. ‘You saw that… Anyone would think that all these new agricultural instruments burn their hands. They call me a townsman, they work less hard on my farm than on the others with the excuse that I can afford to pay more; and they've got the support of my neighbours, the other farmers, who accuse me of teaching the local people bad methods of work; they're furious with me because they say they'll soon be unable to find anyone who can work in the good old way.’

  The gig was just going into Rognes along the Bazoches-le-Doyen road when the deputy caught sight of Father Godard coming out of Macqueron's place where he had been to lunch that Sunday after Mass. Chédeville remembered his electioneering concerns and asked:

  ‘And how about religious feeling in the country districts?’

  ‘Oh, they go to church and that's about all,’ Hourdequin replied casually.

  He stopped the gig in front of Macqueron's tavern, where the landlord himself had remained in the doorway with the priest, and he introduced the deputy mayor, who was dressed in his short, greasy old overcoat. But at this, Coelina came bustling up, looking very clean in her cotton dress and propelling her daughter in front of her. Berthe, the pride of the family, was dressed like a young lady, in a silk gown with little mauve stripes. Meanwhile, the village, seemingly dead and completely idle on this fine Sunday afternoon, was rousing itself in surprise at this extraordinary visitation. Villagers were coming out of their houses one by one and children were peering from behind their mothers' skirts. There was much hustle and bustle at Lengaigne's particularly; he poked his head out, razor in hand, while his wife Flore broke off from weighing four pennyworth of tobacco to stick her nose to the window. They were both cut to the quick to see the gentleman getting out of his gig in front of their rival's door. And so, gradually, people began to come up, groups were forming, Rognes was already aware, from one end of the village to the other, of the important occasion.