Soon they would race through the fields, driving before them
in disordered flight the black goblins of winter, and leaving in their
wake green growing things and tender, subtle perfumes. The wayside
greenery, robing itself in tiny buds, was already heralding their
arrival. The birds were venturing forth from their retreats in order
to wing their way among the crows croaking wrathfully above the closed
tombs. The landscape was beginning to smile in the sunlight with the
artless, deceptive smile of a child who looks candidly around while his
pockets are stuffed with stolen goodies.
The husbandmen had ploughed the fields and filled the furrows with seed.
Men might go on killing each other as much as they liked; the soil had
no concern with their hatreds, and on that account, did not propose to
alter its course. As every year, the metal cutter had opened its
usual lines, obliterating with its ridges the traces of man and beast,
undismayed and with stubborn diligence filling up the tunnels which the
bombs had made.
Sometimes the ploughshare had struck against an obstacle underground
. . . an unknown, unburied man; but the cultivator had continued on its
way without pity. Every now and then, it was stopped by less yielding
obstructions, projectiles which had sunk into the ground intact. The
rustic had dug up these instruments of death which occasionally had
exploded their delayed charge in his hands.
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