Status Updates From La Terre (Les Rougon-Macqua...

Often he would lose patience when she was in one of her bad moods, when she devoured his seed and then, because of too much or too little water, refused to give a harvest; at such times, he was seized by doubt and he would even accuse himself of being an incompetent, or impotent male; if the land had not brought forth a child, the fault must be his.

...despite his annoyance; he was not at all proud of his conduct in all this.

Every sentence had a double meaning and she reminded them that she was leaving that evening: easy come, easy go, and if this was your last chance, you'd be sorry if you didn't put your finger in the sauce for the last time. The shepherd was eating with a blank look while the farmer said nothing, and did not seem to understand either. In order not to betray himself, Jean was obliged to laugh with the others, ...

...the ewes, the oldest of which were sold each year; and the rams covered the young ewes at regular intervals. They were crossbred Leicesters and merinos, splendid animals, gentle and stupid-looking, with heavy heads and big round noses like violently passionate men.

The sheep-pen occupied the entire rear of the farmyard, one single covered building ninety yards long in which the eight hundred sheep belonging to the farm were kept separated by hurdles: in one part the ewes, in various groups; in another the lambs; in yet a third, the rams. The male lambs were castrated when two months old and reared for sale, whereas the females were kept in order to provide replacements for...

Which one of the five was it? It might as well be this one as that, or perhaps the whole lot, one after another.

...appearing stupid, and tor-mented in his turn by his need for this vicious little creature who was so adept at arousing a man's desires.

If truth be known, there was another reason why he liked the farm. While he was mending the doors, the Cognet girl had come to visit him and opened her legs amongst the shavings on the floor. It was she in fact who led him on, unable to resist the sturdy limbs of such a well-built young man, whose massive regular features gave promise of vigorous sexual prowess. He succumbed and went on succumbing, for fear of...

All the farm-hands tumbled her in the hay: not a single man passed through the farmyard gate without climbing on top of her; and one day, when she had gone down into the cellar with Hourdequin, although he had till then held back, he too tried to have a go at this ugly little slattern; but she offered such furious resistance and scratched and bit so much that he was forced to leave her alone.

...over the centuries, this possession seemingly never to be achieved, explained his love for his own plot, his passion for land, the largest possible amount of land, the rich, heavy lump of soil that you can touch and weigh in your hand. Yet how thankless and indifferent that land was!

...; then the constant, intimate link with the land which makes him love and desire it with a passion such as you might feel for someone else's wife whom you care for and take in your arms but can never possess; that land which, after you have coveted it in such suffering for centuries, you finally obtain by conquest and make your own, the sole joy and light of your life. And this desire which had built up over...

...countryside,' Jean read on, in his quiet, careful voice. 'The hour of victory will soon strike on the clock of history...'

Suppose they were to lose patience once again and claim at last their rightful heritage? And the vision of old surged through the land, of tall, ragged, half-naked fellows, lusting and mad with violence, spreading ruin and destruction in the same way as they have themselves been ruined and destroyed, raping in their turn the wives of those who had raped theirs!
'Rein in your anger, you men and women of the...

Such were the Christian Bagaudes of Gaul, the Pastoureaux of the time of the Crusades, then later on, the Croquants and the Nu-Pieds hurling themselves against the nobles and the soldiers of the king. After four hundred years, the cry of pain and anger from all the Jacques Bonhommes which still resounds over the devastated fields made the masters quake in their castles. Suppose they were to lose patience once...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillau...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_d...

He tried to bring the conversation round to the more salacious rights, such as the jus primae noctis, which the little book was content modestly to hint at.
'How about that? The lord stuck his thigh into the bride's bed and then on the first night he'd stick...'
They prevented him from finishing his sentence.

...bishop had the tithes, the lord taxed and filled his coffers with everything. And now the common man no longer owned anything, neither land nor water nor fire nor even the air he breathed. He had to pay and keep on paying, pay to live, pay to die, pay for his deeds of contract, his herds, even his pleasure.

...many tolls and levies that he was left with little more than stones to eat. Then followed a terrifying catalogue of all the dues the wretched peasant had to pay. No one could draw up an accurate and complete list because they were legion; an icy blast that blew from the king, the bishop and the lord all together. Three ravening beasts were devouring the same body: the king had the quit-rent and talliage, the...

While the townspeople revolted, founded communes and achieved status as a middle class, the peasant, isolated and possessing nothing, not even himself, did not succeed in freeing himself until later, by buying with his own money the freedom to be a man; and only an illusory freedom at that, for the landowner was hamstrung by vicious and ruinous taxes, his tenure was always precarious, his property burdened with so...

'Yes, I went quite a long way... But I didn't get as far as the Crimea. I was on the point of going when they took Sebastopol... But later on there was Italy...'

...run about stark-naked with a pipe stuck up her behind.
'For Christ's sake,' said Bécu, addressing Fanny, 'do you want Nénesse to be a cissy?... I'm going to make quite sure that Delphin goes into the army.'

So in spite of the difference in time, they both had common memories: cutting off Bedouins' ears and threading them on a string; Bedouin women with their bodies rubbed all over in oil whom you picked up behind the hedgerows and stuffed in every hole. Jesus Christ in particular would often tell a story which used to bring big guffaws from the peasants: a great cow of a woman as yellow as a lemon whom they'd made...

Very Huysmans' belfry scene.