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ACROSS THE FIELDS
Anatole France
After breakfast Catherine goes out into the
meadows with her little brother Jack. When they
start out the day is as young and fresh as they
are. The sky is not exactly blue; it is rather a
gray, but a gray that is softer than all the blues
in the world. Catherine’s eyes are the very same
gray, and seem made out of a piece of the morning sky.
Catherine and Jack go quite alone into the
meadows. Their mother is a farmer’s wife and
has work to do at the farm. They have no nurse
to take them out, but then they don’t need one.
They know the way; they know the woods and
the fields and the hills equally well. Catherine
can even tell the time of day from seeing where the
sun is in the sky, and she has knowledge of all
kinds of nature’s secrets that city children never
dream of. Little Jack himself knows many things
about the woods and ponds and mountains, for
he has the soul of a true little country boy.
The meadows Catherine and Jack go through
are full of flowers, and on the way Catherine picks
a bouquet of the pretty blossoms. She gathers
blue flowers and poppies and cowslips, as well as
buttercups, or stew pans, as some call them.
She gathers the dark spikes of the milk weed and
stork’s bills and lilies of the valley, whose little
bells give out such a delicious odor when stirred
by the least bit of wind. Catherine loves the flowers
because they are beautiful. She loves them, too,
because they make such lovely ornaments. She is
only a simple little country girl, with her pretty
hair hidden under a brown cap. Her cotton apron
covers a plain little dress, and she wears wooden
shoes. But there are things which little girls know
from the day they are born. Catherine knows that
flowers make fine trimmings, and that lovely ladies
who put bouquets in their corsages look even lovelier
for doing so. So she thinks she must be very fine
indeed just now because she has a bouquet as big
as her head. Her ideas are as fine and airy as
her flowers. There are ideas that you can’t put
into words; there are no words good enough for
them. They require tunes and songs, lively and
sweet, and gay and gentle. So Catherine sings while
she gathers her flowers, bits from her nursery songs:
“I’m going to the woods alone,” or “My heart
I give to him, My heart I give to him.”
Little Jack is a different sort altogether. He
has other ideas. He is a regular boy. He isn’t
out of petticoats yet, but his spirit is ahead of his
years, and there’s no spirit finer than that. Though
he keeps a good hold on his sister’s apron with one
hand, for fear of falling, he lays his switch about
him with the other hand with all the strength of
a sturdy boy. His father’s head workman doesn’t
crack his whip any louder over his horses’ heads
when he leads them back from the river. Little
Jack is not going to spend his time in soft sleep
and dreams. He doesn’t care anything about wild
flowers. For his make-believes he thinks of hard
work. He makes believe about carts stuck in the
muddy roads and percheron horses tugging at their
collars as he shouts at them.
Catherine and Jack climb up above the fields on
the slope of the hill to a little knoll where they can
see all the fires of the village scattered through the
foliage, and toward the horizon the steeples of six
different parishes. It is a place which makes you
realize how great the world is. Catherine thinks
she can understand better now the stories that have
been told her about the dove and the ark and the
people of Israel in the promised land, and of Jesus
journeying from one village to another.
“Let’s sit down here” she says.
She seats herself, and, spreading her hands, scat-
ters her flowery harvest round her. Her little body
has been perfumed with them all, and in a moment
the butterflies are circling round her. She picks
and arranges the flowers, and makes garlands and
crowns of them, and hangs little bells at her ears
for ear-rings. Little Jack, occupied with his im-
aginary horses, catches sight of her thus dressed up,
and at once is seized with admiration. A pious
thought strikes his little soul. He stops, and the
whip falls from his hands. He sees that she is
beautiful. He would like to be beautiful too, and
covered with flowers. He tries to express his wish
in his pretty obscure way, and though he feels that
he tries in vain, Catherine understands. Little
Catherine is a big sister, and a big sister is a little
mother.
“Yes, deary” cries Catherine, “I’ll make you a
beautiful crown and you’ll look like a king.”
So here she is plaiting together blue and red and
yellow flowers into a chaplet. She puts the crown
of flowers on little Jack’s head, and he turns red
with joy. She puts her arms around him and lifts
him off the ground and stands him, all covered with
flowers, on a great stone near by. She admires
him now because he is beautiful, and because it is
she that has made him so.
Standing upright on his rustic pedestal little Jack
understands that he is beautiful and the idea gives
him a deep respect for himself. He realizes that he
is sacred. Stiff, immovable, his eyes round, his
lips shut tight, his arms hanging, his hands open
and his fingers sticking out like the spokes of a wheel,
he tastes a solemn joy. The sky is over his head,
the woods and the fields are at his feet. He is in
the middle of the world. He is only good, only
beautiful.
