Read "Sons of the Soil" by Honoré De Balzac online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
"Ha! by my pipe, papa! " exclaimed Tonsard, seeing his father-in-law as the old man entered and supposing him in quest of food, "your stomach is lively this morning! We haven't anything to give you. How about that rope, -- the rope, you know, you were to make for us? It is amazing how much you make over night and how little there is made in the morning! You ought long ago to have twisted the one that is to twist you out of existence; you are getting too costly for us."
The wit of a peasant or laborer is very Attic; it consists in speaking out his mind and giving it a grotesque expression. We find the same thing in a drawing-room. Delicacy of wit takes the place of picturesque vulgarity, and that is really all the difference there is.