I don't think we stopped again till we got to Lyons, and all the way
there I sat at the window looking at the landscape--the long, long
plain that the French peasant cultivates unceasingly. Out of that long
plain came all the money that was lost in Panama, and all the money
invested in Russian bonds--fine milliards came out of the French
peasants' stockings. We passed through La Beauce. I believe it was
there that Zola went to study the French peasant before he wrote "La
Terre." Huysmans, with that benevolent malice so characteristic of
him, used to say that Zola's investigation was limited to going out
once for a drive in a carriage with Madame Zola. The primitive man
that had risen out of some jungle of my being did not view this
immense and highly cultivated plain sympathetically. It seemed to him
to differ little from the town, so utterly was nature dominated by man
and portioned out. On a subject like this one can meditate for a long
time, and I meditated till my meditation was broken by the stopping of
the train. We were at Lyons. The tall white-painted houses reminded me
of Paris--Lyons, as seen from the windows of _La Cote d'Azur_ at
the end of a grey December day might be Paris. The climate seemed the
same; the sky was as sloppy and as grey.
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