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Across the Fields

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By Staff Middle Land

May 7, 2024
5:38 pm
Los Angeles, CA

By Anatole France* AFTER breakfast Catherine goes out into the meadows with her little brother Jack. When they start out the day is as young and fresh as they are. The sky is not exactly blue; it is rather a gray, but a gray that is softer than all the blues in the world. Catherine’s eyes are the very same gray and seem made out of a piece of the morning sky. Catherine and Jack go quite alone into the meadows. Their mother is a farmer’s wife and has work to do at the farm. They have no nurse to take them out, but then they don’t need one. They know the way; they know the woods and the fields and the hills equally well. The meadows Catherine

By Anatole France*

AFTER breakfast Catherine goes out into the meadows with her little brother Jack. When they start out the day is as young and fresh as they are. The sky is not exactly blue; it is rather a gray, but a gray that is softer than all the blues in the world. Catherine’s eyes are the very same gray and seem made out of a piece of the morning sky. Catherine and Jack go quite alone into the meadows. Their mother is a farmer’s wife and has work to do at the farm. They have no nurse to take them out, but then they don’t need one. They know the way; they know the woods and the
fields and the hills equally well.

The meadows Catherine and Jack go through are full of flowers, and Catherine picks a bouquet of the pretty blos-soms. Catherine loves the flowers because they are beautiful.

Little Jack is a different sort altogether. He is a regular boy. Though he keeps a good hold on his sister’s apron with one hand, for fear of falling, he lays his switch about him with the other hand with all the strength of a sturdy boy. His father’s head workman doesn’t crack his whip any louder over his horses’ heads when he leads them back from the river. Little Jack is not going to spend his time in soft sleep and dreams. He doesn’t care anything about wild flowers. For his make-believes, he thinks of hard work. He makes believe about carts stuck in the muddy roads and big per- cheron horses tugging at their collars, as he shouts at them.

Catherine and Jack climb up above the fields on the slope of the hill where they can see all the fires of the village. It is a place which makes you realize how great the world is.
“Let’s sit down here,” says Catherine.

She seats herself, and, spreading her hands, scatters her flowery harvest round her. Her little body has been perfumed with them all, and in a moment the butterflies are circling round her. She picks and arranges the flowers, and makes garlands and crowns of them, and hangs little bells at her ears for earrings. Little Jack catches sight of her thus, and at once is seized with admiration. He stops, and the whip falls from his hands. He sees that she is beautiful. He would like to be beautiful, too, and covered with flowers.

‘Til make you a crown,” cries Catherine, “and you will look like a king.” She puts the crown of flowers on little Jack’s head, and he turns red with joy. She puts her arms around him, lifts him off the ground and stands him, all cov-ered with flowers, on a great stone near by. She admires him because he is beautiful, and it is she that has made him so.
Little Jack understands that he is beautiful and the idea gives him a deep respect for himself. Stiff, immovable, his eyes round, his lips shut tight, his hands open and his fingers sticking out like the spokes of a wheel, he tastes a solemn joy. The sky is over his head, woods and fields are at his feet. He is in the middle of the world. He is only good, only beautiful.

*From Boys and Girls. Copyright. 1913. Used by permission of the publishers, Dufficld & Company

Jacques Anatolc Thibault (Anatolc France), a modem French writer who won the Nobel prize far literature, wrote My Friend’s Book, Boys and Girls, and other stories from memories of his own boyhood.

These pictures arc based on the illustrations drawn for Boys ani Girls by Maurice Boutct dc Monvel, one of the most famous French illustrators of the late 19th Century, who delightfully captured the sim- plicity and quaintness of French children.