The history of a man without a history I have called this. But even without events, without passions, without desires, without revolts, without search for better things, and with the apathy of lifelong labour directed to no end, is it not still a history? The evolution of human society cannot be denied. But the time seems distant when men shall keep abreast in their progression. Up to the present time, what a lot of laggards! Consider the mental development of the cave man, chipping his flint, polishing his stone axe, sharpening his arrows, dividing his time between hunting and fighting, defending his hearth with vigilant effort, and trying to destroy the hearth of his neighbour, and then tell me whether the wretched man who spends all the days of his life sawing the same board, hammering the same iron-bar, turning the same crank of the same machine all day long--whether this man is intellectually superior to the cave man? All this, of course, must change. Let us, in order to help on the good work, take account as we go of the temporary conditions of human kind. XVIII FLOWER O' THE WHEAT Flower o' the Wheat was the prettiest girl in my village. Tall, well set up, stepping along with a fine self-confidence, she brightened by her clear laughter the fields, the woods, the deep road cuts of the Vendée. With the first warm days of spring the milky whiteness of her skin would be dotted over with a constellation of freckles. The peasants used to say: "The good Lord threw a handful of bran in her face." Bran and flour, it would seem, for her face under the sun's rays remained as white as if dusted over with the powder of bolted wheat. Hence, perhaps, her surname, or possibly she owed it to her red hair, matched rather unusually by tawny eyes. She gave one the impression of being all of the beautiful gold-brown tone of ripe wheat. Flower o' the Wheat was beautiful, and knew it because she was told so all day long. The man of the fields is not by a long way insensible to beauty. His esthetic sense is not the same as ours. He is not moved by a line, a contour, the grace of a moving form, but he is powerfully affected by colour, as are all whom civilization has not overrefined. Flower o' the Wheat being a creature of living colour, had, therefore, the pleasure of hearing herself proclaimed fair, and of having to fend off the playfulness, and occasionally the somewhat robust caresses, of manly youth all the way from Sainte Hermine to Chantonnay. Plant a flower wherever you will, there the bees will congregate. Wherever you meet beauty, you will see men coming to forage, with eyes and hands and lips. Between city and country there is only a difference of setting.