ten o’clock in the morning
Mothers take their babes and their little girls and boys ; the feeblest old men drag themselves into the wheat-fields ; and even those who own property are paupers for the nonce . All gleaners appear in rags . The count and Michaud were present on horseback when the first tattered batch entered the first fields from which the wheat had been carried . It was ten o'clock in the morning . August had been a hot month , the sky was cloudless , blue as a periwinkle ; the earth was baked , the wheat flamed , the harvestmen worked with their faces scorched by the reflection of the sun-rays on the hard and arid earth . All were silent , their shirts wet with perspiration ; while from time to time , they slaked their thirst with water from round , earthenware jugs , furnished with two handles and a mouth-piece stoppered with a willow stick . At the father end of the stubble-field stood the carts which contained the sheaves , and near them a group of at least a hundred beings who far exceeded the hideous conceptions of Murillo and Teniers , the boldest painters of such scenes , or of Callot , that poet of the fantastic in poverty .