And they who are not enticed away by emigration are evicted from hearth and home by usurers. Villages in which the dance of the kermesse has long been silent are of a sudden cut in two by a network of railways. There is no fairness in the fight. The country is conquered because the blood of its inhabitants has been sucked out of it. 'La plaine est morte et ne se défend plus.'[12] Everything streams to Oppidomagnum. This is the name given by Verhaeren in his symbolical drama _Les Aubes_--which, with the _Campagnes Hallucinées_ and the _Villes Tentaculaires_ forms the trilogy of the social revolution--to the monster city. This, with its arms as of a polypus, pitilessly sucks all the strength of the district round it. From all sides strength streams in upon it. 'Tous les chemins se rythment vers elle.' Not only from the country does she drink the strength of men, all the ocean seems to be pouring its waters only to her port. 'Toute la mer va vers la ville.'[13] The whole sea streams to the city; all the rolling waves seem only to exist that they may bring to her this wandering forest of ships. And she absorbs everything, digests it in the 'noire immensité des usines rectangulaires,'[14] greedily devours it, to spit it out again as gold. But this immense social struggle between the country and the town expresses, like the other new phases, something yet higher. It is only a momentary symbol of an eternal schism. The country is the symbol of the Conservatives. In the country the forms of labour are petrified, calm, and regular; there life is without haste, and only regulated by the rotation of the seasons. All sensations, all forms are pure and simple. These men stand nearer to the freaks of chance: a flash of lightning, a hailstorm can destroy their labour; and so they fear God, and do not dare to doubt in Him. The town, however, symbolises progress. In the thunder of the streets of to-day no Madonna's voice is heard; the life of the individual is protected from chance by prearranged order; the fever of the new creates also a yearning for new conditions of life, new circumstances, for a new God. L'esprit des campagnes était l'esprit de Dieu; Il eut la peur de la recherche et des révoltes, Il chut; et le voici qui meurt, sous les essieux Et sous les chars en feu des récoltes.[15] If the country was the past, the town is the future. The country only seeks to keep what it has, to preserve: its character, its beauty, its God. But the town must first of all create, must make itself the new beauty, the new faith, and the new God. Le rêve ancien est mort et le nouveau se forge. Il est fumant dans la pensée et la sueur Des bras fiers de travail, des fronts fiers de lueurs, Et la ville l'entend monter du fond des gorges De ceux qui le portent en eux Et le veulent crier et sangloter aux cieux.[16]