"You begin on one row," said the farmer, "I will take the next," and pulling off their coats, despite the cold, for it meant hard work, they began on their task. Coming up the hill they had talked cheerily to each other; but no sooner did they begin to dig than their spirits sank, and they grew silent, not wanting to impart the thoughts that the work of destruction engendered. If a root, perchance, made very tough resistance, the father once or twice attempted to joke, saying playfully: "It felt quite comfortable there, and did not want to be turned out," or something else to that effect. But he soon gave up the attempt. He could not succeed in banishing from his mind, nor from that of the son working beside him, sad thoughts of the time when the vine prospered, and yielded abundantly the white foaming wine they had drunk so merrily in the old happy days of fêtes and gatherings. The contrast of his former prosperity with present hard times fretted him; and as far as he could see, it weighed still more upon the spirits of his Driot. Thus, in silence, they plied their huge, old-fashioned pickaxes, made to be wielded by giants. The earth flew in showers; the trunks trembled; some few shrivelled leaves left upon the branches fell, and were blown about in the wind with a noise as of broken glass; now the stem was disclosed, vigorous but warped, covered with green moss, the effects of many a summer dew and rain, and tapering off to the size of a tendril. The marks of pruning made by successive vinedressers were not to be numbered; no one could tell the age of the vineyard. Every year since he could remember anything, Driot had pruned it, dressed it, gathered its grapes, drunk of its juice. And now it was dying. Each time that he gave the final blow to a root he felt a pang; each time that, seizing a portion of the lifeless fibres he threw it on the heap of dead uprooted stems, he shrugged his shoulders with mingled sorrow and rage. Dead those veins through which the red, joyous sap was wont to rise. Dead the fertile branches once bending under the weight of bunches of grapes, until they rested a golden glory on the ground! Never again would the flowerets, pale stars with drops of honey in each centre, attract the summer gnats, nor diffuse their mignonette-like perfume far over the fields, even to La Fromentière. Never again would the children of the farmstead push eager hands through the gaps in the hedge to clutch the bunches within reach! Never again would the women carry away basketfuls at vintage time. For many a long day wine would be scarce at the farm, and would be no more of "our own growing." Something belonging to the family, an hereditary and sacred possession seemed to perish with the vineyard, old and faithful servant of the Lumineaus. Father and son were both so intensely penetrated by the sense of their loss, that, as night descended, and the father raised his pickaxe for a final stroke, he could not help exclaiming: