They went into the hop-field, which contained eight rows of hops and disappeared as if in a gigantic vineyard. M. Bastian directed the work, and pointed out that they must begin with the part touching the road. Then the old farmer, his two sons and farm servant, seized each of them one of the poles, heavy with the weight of harvest, the tendrils, the little scaly bells, the leaves all trembled; and after the women had knelt down and had cut the stalks even with the ground, the loosened poles came out of the earth and were lowered and despoiled of the climbing plants they had carried. Stalks, leaves, and flowers were thrown down and placed in heaps--to be carried away by the wagons. The workers did not wait to pick the hops which they would gather at Alsheim in the farmyard in the afternoon. But, already covered with yellow powder and pieces of leaves, the men and women were hurrying to strip the lowered poles. The hops exhaled their bitter, healthy odour, and the humming of the band of workers, like the noise of early vintage, spread out over the immense stretch of country, striped with meadows, stubble, and lucerne, and the open and fertile Alsatian land which the sun was beginning to warm. This light, the repose of the night still neighbouring the day, the full liberty which they did not enjoy every day of the week, the instinctive coquetry evoked by the presence of the men, even the desire of being pleasant to M. Bastian, whom they knew to be of a gay disposition, made these girls and children who picked the hops joyful with a boisterous joy. And one of the farm servants having called out while his horses stopped to take breath: "Is no one singing then?" the daughter of the sacristan, Juliette, with the regular features and the beautiful deep eyes under her well combed and nicely dressed hair, answered: "I know a lovely song." As she answered she looked at the owner of the property, who was smoking, seated on the first row of stubble above the hop-field, and who was contemplating with tenderness now his hops and now his Alsace, where his mind always dwelt. "If it is pretty; sing it," said the master. "Is it a song that the police may hear?" "Part of it." "Then turn round to the forest side: the police do not often go that way because they find nothing to drink there." The workers who were stooping and those who were standing upright laughed silently because of the detestation in which they held the gendarmes. And the beautiful Juliette began to sing--of course in Alsatian--one of those songs which poets compose who do not care to sign their works, and who rhyme in contraband. The full, pure voice sang: "I have cut the hops of Alsace--they have grown on the soil we tilled--the green hops are certainly ours--the red earth is also ours." "Bravo!" said gravely M. Bastian's farmer. He took his pipe from his mouth in order to hear better.