"
"Appliances! Artificial manure! All that humbug which has only sent poor
folks to rack and ruin! Ah! I should just like to see you trying to
cultivate the land better, and make it yield what it'll never yield any
more."
Thereupon he quite lost his temper, became violent and brutal, launching
against the ungrateful earth all the charges which his love of idleness
and his obstinacy suggested. He had travelled, he had fought in Africa as
a soldier, folks could not say that he had always lived in his hole like
an ignorant beast. But, none the less, on leaving his regiment he had
lost all taste for work and come to the conclusion that agriculture was
doomed, and would never give him aught but dry bread to eat. The land
would soon be bankrupt, and the peasantry no longer believed in it, so
old and empty and worn out had it become. And even the sun got out of
order nowadays; they had snow in July and thunderstorms in December, a
perfect upsetting of seasons, which wrecked the crops almost before they
were out of the ground.
"No, monsieur," said Lepailleur, "what you say is impossible; it's all
past. The soil and work, there's nothing left of either.
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