The Devil's Pool

I HAD just been looking long and sadly at Holbein's plowman, and was walking through the fields, musing on rustic life and the destiny of the husbandman. It is certainly tragic for him to spend his days and his strength delving in the jealous earth, that so reluctantly yields up her rich treasures when a morsel of coarse black bread, at the end of the day's work, is the sole reward and profit to be reaped from such arduous toil. The wealth of the soil, the harvests, the fruits, the splendid cattle that grow sleek and fat in the luxuriant grass, are the property of the few, and but instruments of the drudgery and slavery of the many. The man of leisure seldom loves, for their own sake, the fields and meadows, the landscape, or the noble animals which are to be converted into gold for his use. He comes to the country for his health or for change of air, but goes back to town to spend the fruit of his vassal's labor.

George Sand (eigentlich Amandine Lucie Aurore Dupin, verheiratete Baronin Dudevant) wurde am 01.07.1804 in Paris geboren; sie starb am 08.06.1876 in Nohant. Sie schrieb romantische idealistische Romane, in denen sie für die Emanzipation der Frau eintrat. Bekannt wurde sie auch durch ihre Dorfgeschichten, in denen sie lebenswahre Schilderungen aus bäuerlichem Milieu gibt.