malediction into an impassioned song to the blossoming springtide. Babet and Jean receive the old man’s blessing on their betrothal.

[Pg 21]

Next follows a day in summer, five years later; Jean, as a soldier in the Italian war, goes through the horrors of a battle and is wounded, but not dangerously, in the shoulder. Just as he marches into action he receives a letter from Uncle Lazare and Babet, full of tender fears and tremors; he reads it when he recovers consciousness after the battle. Presently he creeps off to[Pg 22] help his excellent colonel, and they support one another till both are carried off to hospital. This episode, which has something in common with the “Sevastopol” of Tolstoi, is exceedingly ingenious in its observation of the sentiments of a common man under fire.

[Pg 22]

The third part of the story occurs fifteen years later. Jean and Babet have now long been married, and Uncle Lazare, in extreme old age, has given up his cure, and lives with them in their farm by the river. All things have prospered with them save one. They are rich, healthy, devoted to one another, respected by all their neighbours; but there is a single happiness lacking—they have no child. And now, in the high autumn splendour—when the corn and the grapes are ripe, and the lovely Durance winds like a riband of white satin through the gold and purple of the land[Pg 23]scape—this gift also is to be theirs. A little son is born to them in the midst of the vintage weather, and the old uncle, to whom life has now no further good thing to offer, drops painlessly from life, shaken down like a blown leaf by his access of joy, on the evening of the birthday of the child.

[Pg 23]

The optimistic tone has hitherto been so consistently preserved, that we must almost resent the tragedy of the fourth day. This is eighteen years later, and Jean is now an elderly man. His son Jacques is in early manhood. In the midst of their felicity, on a winter’s night, the Durance rises in spate, and all are swept away. It is impossible, in a brief sketch, to give an impression of the charm and romantic sweetness of this little masterpiece, a veritable hymn to the Ninon of Provence; but it raises many curious reflections to consider that this exquisitely pathetic[Pg 24] pastoral, with all its gracious and tender personages, should have been written by the master of Naturalism, the author of Germinal and of Pot-Bouille.

[Pg 24]

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