"What is his business?" Prokófi asked me.
When I explained to him that he had come to invite the Russians to
form an alliance with France in case of a war with Germany, Prokófi
apparently became quite dissatisfied, and, turning to the women, who
were sitting near a haycock, he shouted at them in a strong voice,
which involuntarily betrayed the feelings which this conversation
had provoked in him, that they should go and rake up the unraked hay.
"Come now, you crows! Have you fallen asleep? Come! Much time we
have to squeeze the German! We have not finished the mowing yet, and
it looks likely that we shall be mowing on Wednesday," he said. And
then, as though fearing to offend the stranger by such a remark, he
added, displaying his half-worn-off teeth in a good-natured smile,
"You had better come and work with us, and send the German, too.
When we get through working, we shall have a good time. Well take
the German along. They are just such folk as we." And, having said
this, Prokófi took his muscular arm out of the crotch of the fork,
on which he had been leaning, threw the fork over his shoulders, and
went away to the women.
"_Oh, le brave homme!_" the polite Frenchman exclaimed, smiling. And
with this he then concluded his diplomatic mission to the Russian
people.
The sight of these so radically different men,--the one beaming with
freshness, alacrity, elegance, the well-fed Frenchman, in a silk hat
and long overcoat of the latest fashion, energetically illustrating
with his white hands, unused to labour, how to squeeze the Germans,
and the sight of the dishevelled Prokófi, with hay-seed in his hair,
dried up from work, sunburnt, always tired and always working, in
spite of his immense rupture, with fingers swollen from work, with
his loosely hanging homespun trousers, battered bast shoes, jogging
along with an immense forkful of hay over his shoulder in that
indolent pace of a labouring man, which economizes motion,--the
sight of these two so radically different men elucidated to me then
many things, and has occurred to me now, after the Toulon-Paris
celebrations. One of them personified all those men, nurtured by
the labours of the masses, who later use these masses as food for
cannon; and Prokófi personified to me that food for cannon, which
nurtures and makes secure the men who dispose of it.