rt figure, the skeleton Death, who with a whip skips nimbly along
at the horses' side and urges the team. Under the picture is a quotation
in old French, to the effect that after the laborer's life of travail
and service, in which he has to gain his bread by the sweat of his brow,
here comes Death to fetch him away. And from so rude a life does Death
take him, says George Sand, that Death is hardly unwelcome; and in
another composition by Holbein, where men of almost every condition,--
popes, sovereigns, lovers, gamblers, monks, soldiers,--are taunted with
their fear of Death and do indeed see his approach with terror, Lazarus
alone is easy and composed, and sitting on his dunghill at the rich
man's door, tells Death that he does not dread him.

With her thoughts full of Holbein's mournful picture, George Sand goes
out into the fields of her own Berry:--

"My walk was by the border of a field which some peasants were getting
ready for being sown presently. The space to be ploughed was wide, as in
Holbein's picture. The landscape was vast also; the great lines of green
which it contained were just touched with russet by the approach of
autumn; on the rich brown soil recent rain had left, in a good many
furrows, lines of water, which shone in the sun like silver threads. The
day was clear and soft, and the earth gave out a light smoke where it
had been freshly laid open by the ploughshare. At the top of the field
an old man, whose broad back and severe face were like those of the old
peasant of Holbein, but whose clothes told no tale of poverty, was
gravely driving his plough of an antique shape, drawn by two tranquil
oxen, with coats of a pale buff, real patriarchs of the fallow, tall of
make, somewhat thin, with long and backward-sloping horns, the kind of
old workmen who by habit have got to be _brothers_ to one another, as
throughout our country-side they are called, and who, if one loses the
other, refuse to work with a new comrade, and fret themselves to death.
People unacquainted with the country will not believe in this affection
of the ox for his yoke-fellow. They should come and see one of the poor
beasts in a corner of his stable, thin, wasted, lashing with his
restless tail his lean flanks, blowing uneasily and fastidiously on the
provender offered to him, his eyes forever turned towards the stable
door, scratching with his foot the empty place left at his side,
sniffing the yokes and bands which his companion