Thereupon he blew into his flute.
THE BAGPIPERS
BY
GEORGE SAND
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN
AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1890,
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
UNIVERSITY PRESS:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
TO M. EUGÈNE LAMBERT.
MY DEAR CHILD,—As you like to hear me relate thetales told by the peasants at our veillées,—I mean thewatch-nights of my youth, when I had time to listen tothem,—I shall try to recall the story of Étienne Depardieu,and piece together the scattered fragments of it stillremaining in my memory. It was told to me by the manhimself during several of the breyage evenings,—a namegiven, as you know, to the late hours of the night spent ingrinding hemp, when those present relate their villagechronicles. It is long since Père Depardieu slept thesleep of the just, and he was quite old when he told methis story of the naïve adventures of his youth. For thisreason I shall try to let him speak for himself, imitatinghis manner as closely as I can. You will not blame mefor insisting on so doing, because you know from experiencethat the thoughts and emotions of a peasant cannotbe rendered in our own style of language without makingthem unnatural and giving them a tone of even shockingaffectation.
You also know by experience, that the peasantry guessor comprehend much more than we believe them capableof understanding; and you have often been struck withtheir sudden insight, which, even in matters of art, has anappearance of revelation. If I were to tell you in mylanguage and yours certain things which you have heardand understood in theirs, you would find those very thingsso unlike what is natural to these people that you wouldaccuse me of unconsciously putting something of my owninto the relation, and of attributing to the peasantryreflections and feelings which they could not have. Itsuffices to introduce into the expression of their ideasa single word that is not in their vocabulary to raise adoubt as to whether the idea itself emanated from them.But when we listen to their speech, we at once observethat although they may not have, like us, a choice ofwords suited to every shade of thought, yet they assuredlyhave words enough to formulate what they think and todescribe what strikes their senses.
Therefore it is not, as some have reproachfully declared,for the petty pleasure of producing a style hitherto unusedin literature, and still less to revive ancient forms of speechand old expressions which all the world knows and isfamiliar with, that I have bound myself to the humbletask of preserving to Étienne Depardieu's tale the localcolor that belongs to it. It is, rather, because I find itimpossible to make him speak as we do without distortingthe methods by which his mind worked when he expressedhimself on points with which he was not familiar, and asto which he evidently had a strong desire both tounderstand and to make himself understood.
If, in spite of the care and conscientiousness which Ishall put into this task, you find that my narratorsometimes sees too clearly or to