By a singular chance
a complete answer to this objection may be found in a paragraph which
appeared in the _Daily Mail_ of 18th April, 1911. A few days before, a
peasant woman in France had entered her father's bedroom and struck him
nine times on the head with an axe, afterwards going home to bed. The
reason for the crime was that the old man two years previously had
divided his property between his two daughters on condition that they
paid him a monthly allowance. His elder daughter was always in arrear
with her share of the pension, and, after constant altercations between
father and daughter, the latter extinguished her liability in the manner
indicated. Now this tragedy in real life is the actual plot of _La
Terre_, which was written twenty-four years before it occurred.
In accordance with the author's usual plan, whereby a heavy book was
followed by a light one, _La Terre_ was succeeded by _Le Reve_, a work
at the other extreme of the literary gamut. As _La Terre_ is of the
earth, earthy, so is _Le Reve_ spiritual and idyllic, the work of a man
enamoured of the refined and the beautiful.
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