The whole
picture was beautiful in strength and in grace: the landscape, the man,
the child, the oxen under the yoke; and, despite the mighty struggle in
which the earth was conquered, there was a feeling of peace and profound
tranquillity hovering over everything. When the obstacle was surmounted
and the team resumed its even, solemn progress, the ploughman, whose
pretended violence was only to give his muscles a little practice and
his vitality an outlet, suddenly resumed the serenity of simple souls
and cast a contented glance upon his child, who turned to smile at him.
Then the manly voice of the young _paterfamilias_ would strike up the
solemn, melancholy tune which the ancient tradition of the province
transmits, not to all ploughmen without distinction, but to those most
expert in the art of arousing and sustaining the spirit of
working-cattle. That song, whose origin was perhaps held sacred, and to
which mysterious influences seem to have been attributed formerly, is
reputed even to the present day to possess the virtue of keeping up the
courage of those animals, of soothing their discontent, and of whiling
away the tedium of their long task. It is not enough to have the art of
driving them so as to cut the furrow in an absolutely straight line, to
lighten their labor by raising the share or burying it deeper in the
ground: a man is not a perfect ploughman if he cannot sing to his
cattle, and that is a special science which requires special taste and
powers.
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