If it were not for high farming and manure from Paris, which
give heavy crops of fodder of different kinds, I do not know
how cow-keepers and dairymen would manage. As it is, the
animals are peculiarly subject to inflammatory diseases con-
sequent on the heating diet and confinement to cow-sheds.
They wear out their cows round about Paris just as they wear
out horses in the streets. Then market-gardens, orchards,
nurseries, and vineyards pay so much better than pasture, that
the grazing land is gradually diminishing. A few years more,
and milk will be sent in by express to Paris, like saltfish, and
what is going on round Paris is happening also about all large
towns. The evils of the minute subdivision of landed prop-
erty are extending round a hundred French cities ; some day
all France will be ^aten up by them.
"In 1800, according to Chaptal, there were about five
million acres of vineyard ; exact statistics would show fully
five times as much to-day. When Normandy is split up into
an infinitude of small holdings, by our system of inheritance
fifty per cent, of the horse and cattle trade there will fall off;
still Normandy will have the monopoly of the Paris miik
trade, for luckily the climate will not permit vine culture.
Another curious thing to notice is the steady rise in the price
of butcher meat. In 1814, prices ranged from seven to
eleven sous per pound ; in 1850, twenty years hence, Paris
will pay twenty sous, unless some genius is raised up to carry
out the theories of Charles X."
"You have pointed out the greatest evil in France," said
the justice of the peace. " The cause of it lies in the chapter
Des Successions in the Civil Code, wherein the equal division
of real estate among the children of the family is required.
MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 219
That is the pestle which is constantly grinding the country
to powder, gives to every one but a life-interest in property
which cannot remain as it is after his death. A continuous
process of decomposition (for the reverse process is never set
up) will end by ruining France. The French Revolution
generated a deadly virus, and the Days of July have set the
poison working afresh ; this dangerous germ of disease is the
acquisition of land by peasants. If the chapter Des Successions
is the origin of the evil, it is through the peasant that it
reaches its worst phase. The peasant never relinquishes the
land he has won. Let a bit of land once get between the
ogre's ever-hungry jaws, he divides and subdivides it until there
are but strips of three furrows left. Nay, even there he does
not stop ! he will divide the three furrows in lengths. The
commune of Argenteuil, which M. Grossette instanced just
now, is a case in point. The preposterous value which the
peasants set on the smallest scraps of land makes it quite im-
possible to reconstruct an estate. The law and procedure are
made a dead letter at once by this division, and ownership is
reduced to absurdity. But it is a comparatively trifling
matter that the minute subdivision of the law should paralyze
the treasury and the law by making it impossible to carry out
its wisest regulations. There are far greater evils than even
these. There are actually landlords of property bringing in
fifteen and twenty centimes per annum 1
" Monsieur has just said something about the falling off
of cattle and horses," Clousier continued, looking at Gros-
sette ; "the system of inheritance counts for much in that
matter. The peasant proprietor keeps cows, and cows only,
because milk enters into his diet; he sells the calves; he even
sells butter. He has no mind to raise oxen, still less to breed
horses; he has only just sufficient fodder for a year's consump-
tion ; and when a dry spring comes and hay is scarce, he is
forced to take his cow to market ; he cannot afford to keep
her. If it should fall out so unluckily that two bad hay
220 THE COUNTRY PARSON.
harvests came in succession, you would see some strange
fluctuations in the price of beef in Paris, and, above all, in
veal, when the third year came."
"And how would they do for patriotic banquets then?"
asked the doctor, smiling.
"Ah!" exclaimed Mme. Graslin, glancing at Roubaud,
"so even here, as everywhere else, politics must be served up
with journalistic items."
"In this bad business the bourgeoisie play the part of
American pioneers," continued Clousier. " They buy up the
large estates, too large for the peasant to meddle with, and
divide them. After the bulk has been cut up and triturated,
a forced sale or an ordinary sale in lots hands it over sooner
or later to the peasant. Everything nowadays is reduced to
figures, and I know of none more eloquent than these:
France possesses forty-nine million hectares of land, for the
sake of convenience, let us say forty, deducting something for
roads and high-roads, dunes, canals, land out of cultivation,
and wastes like the plain of Montegnac, which need capital.
Now, out of forty million hectares to a population of thirty-
two millions, there are a hundred and twenty-five million
parcels of land, according to the land-tax returns. I have
not taken the fractions into account. So we have outrun the
agrarian law, and yet neither poverty nor discord are at an
end. Then the next thing will be that those who are turning
the land into crumbs and diminishing the output of produce
will find mouthpieces for the cry that true social justice only
permits the usufruct of the land to each. They will say that
ownership in perpetuity is robbery. The Saint-Simonians
have begun already."
"There spoke the magistrate," said Grossette, "and this
is what the banker adds to his bold reflections. When landed
property became tenable by peasants and small shopkeepers, a
great wrong was done to France, though the government does
not so much as suspect it. Suppose that we set down the
MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGXAC. 221
whole mass of the peasants at three million families, after
deducting the paupers. Those families all belong to the wage-
earning class. Their wages are paid in money instead of in
kind "
"There is another immense blunder in our legislation,"
Clousier cried, breaking in on the banker. "In 1790 it
might still have been possible to pass a law empowering
employers to pay wages in kind, but now to introduce
such a measure would be to risk a revolution."
"In this way," Grossetete continued, "the money of the
country passes into the pockets of the proletariat. Now, the
peasant has one passion, one desire, one determination, one
aim in life to die a landed proprietor. This desire, as M.
Clousier has very clearly shown, is one result of the Revolu-
tion a direct consequence of the sale of the national lands.
Only those who have no idea of the state of things in country
districts could refuse to admit that each of those three million
families annually buries fifty francs as a regular thing, and in
this way a hundred and fifty millions of francs are withdrawn
from circulation every year. The science of political econ-
omy has reduced to an axiom the statement that a five-franc
piece, if it passes through a hundred hands in the course of a
day, does duty for five hundred francs. Now, it is certain for
some of us old observers of the state of things in country
districts that the peasant fixes his eyes on a bit of land, keeps
ready to pounce upon it, and bides his time meanwhile he
never invests his capital. The intervals in the peasant's land-
purchases should, therefore, be reckoned at periods of seven
years. For seven years, consequently, a capital of eleven
hundred million francs is lying idle in the peasants' hands;
and as the lower middle classes do the same thing to quite the
same extent, and behave in the same way with regard to
land on too large a scale for the peasant to nibble at, in forty-
two years France loses the interest on two milliards of francs
at least that is to say, on something like a hundred millions
222 \THE COUNTRY PARSON.
every seven years, or six hundred millions in forty-two years.
But this is not the only loss. France has failed to create the
worth of six hundred millions in agricultural or industrial
produce. And this failure to produce may be taken as a loss
of twelve hundred million francs ; for if the market price of
a product were not double the actual cost of production, com-
merce would be at a standstill. The proletariat deprives itself
of six hundred million francs of wages. These six hundred
millions of initial loss that represent, for an economist,
twelve hundred millions of loss of benefit derived from circu-
lation, explain how it is that our commerce, shipping trade,
and agriculture compare so badly with the state of things in
England. In spite of the differences between the two countries
(a good two-thirds of them, moreover, in our favor), England
could mount our cavalry twice over, and every one there
eats meat. But then, under the English system of land-
tenure, it is almost impossible for the working classes to
buy land, and so all the money is kept in constant circulation.
So besides the evils of the comminution of the land, and
the decay of the trade in cattle, horses, and sheep, the
chapter Des Successions costs us a further loss of six hundred
million francs of interest on the capital buried by the peasants
and trades-people, or twelve hundred million francs' worth of
produce (at the least) that is to say, a total loss of three
milliards of francs withdrawn from circulation every half-
century."
" The moral effect is worse than the material effect ! "
cried the cure. "We are turning the peasantry into pauper
landowners, and half educating the lower middle classes. It
will not be long before the canker of Each for himself .' Let
each mind his own business ! which did its work last July among
the upper classes, will spread to the middle classes. A pro-
letariat of hardened materialists, knowing no God but envy,
no zeal but the despair of hunger, with no faith nor belief
left, will come to the front, and trample the heart of the
MADAME GRASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 223
country under foot. The foreigner, waxing great under a
monarchical government, will find us under the shadow of
royalty without the reality of a king, without law under the
cover of legality, owners of property but not proprietors, with
the right of election but without a government, listless holders
of free and independent opinions, equal but equally unfor-
tunate. Let us hope that between now and then God will
raise up in France the man for the time, one of those elect
who breathe a new spirit into a nation, a man who, whether
he is a Sylla or a Marius, whether he comes from the heights
or rises from the depths, will reconstruct society."
"The first thing to do will be to send him to the assizes
or to the police court," said Gerard. "The judgment of
Socrates or of Christ will be given to him, here in 1831, as of
old in Attica and at Jerusalem. To-day, as of old, jealous
mediocrity allows the thinker to starve. If the great political
physicians who have studied the diseases of France, and are
opposed to the spirit of the age, should resist to the starva-
, tion-point, we ridicule them, and treat them as visionaries.
Here in France we revolt against the sovereign thinker, the
great man of the future, just as we rise in revolt against the
political sovereign."
" But in those old times the Sophists had a very limited ,
audience," cried the justice of the peace; "while to-day, /
through the medium of the periodical press, they can lead I
a whole nation astray ; and the press which pleads for com-]
mon-sense finds no echo ! "
The mayor looked at M. Clousier with intense astonish-
ment. Mme. Graslin, delighted to find a simple justice of the
peace interested in such grave problems, turned to her neigh-
bor, M. Roubaud, with, " Do you know M. Clousier? "
"Not till to-day! Madame, you are working miracles,"
he added in her ear. "And yet look at his forehead, how
finely shaped it is ! It is like the classical or traditional
brow that sculptors gave to Lycurgus and the wise men of
224 THE COUNTRY PARSON.
Greece, is it not ? Clearly there was an impolitic side to the
Revolution of July," he added aloud, after going through Gros-
setdte's reasonings. He had been a medical student, and
perhaps would have lent a hand at a barricade.
" 'Twas trebly impolitic," said Clousier. " We have con-
cluded the case for law and finance, now for the government.
The royal power, weakened by the dogma of the national
sovereignty, in virtue of which the election was made on the
9th of August, 1830, will strive to overcome its rival, a prin-
ciple which gives the people the right of changing a dynasty
every time they fail to apprehend the intentions of their
king ; so there is a domestic struggle before us which will
check progress in France for a long while yet."
" England has wisely steered clear of all these sunken
rocks," said Gerard. "I have been in England. I admire
the hive which sends swarms over the globe to. settle and
civilize. In England political debate is a comedy intended
to satisfy the people and to hide the action of authority
which moves untrammeled in its lofty sphere; election there
is not, as in France, the referring of a question to a stupid
bourgeoisie. If the land were divided up, England would
cease to exist at once. The great landowners and the lords
control the machinery of government. They have a navy
which takes possession of whole quarters of the globe (and
under the very eyes of Europe) to fulfill the exigencies of
their trade, and form colonies for the discontented and
unsatisfactory. Instead of waging war on men of ability,
annihilating and underrating them, the English aristocracy
continually seeks them out, rewards and assimilates them.
The English are prompt to act in all that concerns the govern-
ment, and in the choice of men and material, while with us
action of any kind is slow ; and yet they are slow, and we
impatient. Capital with them is adventurous, and always
moving ; with us it is shy and suspicious. Here is corrobora-
tion of M. Grossette's statements about the loss to industry
MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 225
of the peasants' capital ; I can sketch the difference in a few
words. English capital, which is constantly circulating, has
created ten milliards of wealth in the shape of expanded
manufactures and joint-stock companies paying dividends;
while here in France, though we have more capital, it has not
yielded one-tenth part of the profit."
"It is all the more extraordinary," said Roubaud, "since
they are lymphatic, and we are generally either sanguine or
nervous."
" Here is a great problem for you to study, monsieur,"
said Clousier. " Given a national temperament, to find the
institutions best adapted to counteract it. Truly, Cromwell
was a great legislator. He, one man, made England what
she is by promulgating the Act of Navigation, which made
the English the enemy of all other nations, and infused into
them a fierce pride, that has served them as a lever. But in
spite of their garrison at Malta, as soon as France and Russia
fully understand the part to be played in politics by the Black
Sea and the Mediterranean, the discovery of a new route to
Asia by way of Egypt or the Euphrates valley will be a death-
blow to England, just as the discovery of the Cape of Good
Hope was the ruin of Venice."
" And nothing of God in all this ! " cried the cure. " M.
Clousier and M. Roubaud are quite indifferent in matters of
religion and you, monsieur?" he asked questioningly,
turning to Gerard.
"A Protestant," said Grossetgte.
"You guessed rightly!" exclaimed Veronique, with a
glance at the cure as she offered her hand to Clousier to
return to her apartments.
All prejudices excited by M. Gerard's appearance quickly
vanished, and the three notables of Montegnac congratulated
themselves on such an acquisition.
" Unluckily," said M. Bonnet, " there is a cause for an-
tagonism between Russia and the Catholic countries on the
15
226 THE COUNTRY PARSON.
shores of the Mediterranean ; a schism of little real impor-
tance divides the Greek Church from the Latin, to the great
misfortune of humanity."
" Each preaches for his saint," said Mme. Graslin, smiling.
" M. Grossetdte thinks of lost milliards ; M. Clousier of law
in confusion ; the doctor sees in legislation a question of
temperaments ; M. le Cure sees in religion an obstacle in the
way of a good understanding between France and Russia."
"Please add, madame," said Gerard, "that in the seques-
tration of capital by the peasant and small tradesman, I see
the delay of the completion of railways in France "
" Then what would you have ? " asked she.
" Oh ! The admirable Councilors of State who devised
laws in the time of the Emperor and the Corps legislatif, when
those who had brains as well as those who had property had a
voice in the election, a body whose sole function it was to
oppose unwise laws or capricious wars. The present Chamber
of Deputies is like to end, as you will see, by becoming the
governing body, and legalized anarchy it will be."
"Great heavens! " cried the cure in an excess of lofty
patriotism, "how is it that minds so enlightened" he in-
dicated Clousier, Roubaud, and Gerard "see the evil, and
point out the remedy, and do not begin by applying it to
themselves ? All of you represent the classes attacked ; all of
you recognize the necessity of passive obedience on the part
of the great masses in the state, an obedience like that of the
soldier in time of war ; all of you desire the unity of authority,
and wish that it shall never be called in question. But that
consolidation to which England has attained through the de-
velopment of pride and material interests (which are a sort of
belief) can only be attained here by sentiments induced by
Catholicism, and you are not Catholics ! I the priest drop
my character, and reason with rationalists.
"How can you expect the masses to become religious and
to obey if they see irreligion and relaxed discipline around
MADAME GKASLIN AT MONTEGNAC. 227
them ? A people united by any faith will easily get the better
of men- without belief. The law of the interest of all, which
underlies patriotism, is at once annulled by the law of indi-
vidual interest, which authorizes and implants selfishness.
Nothing is solid and durable but that which is natural, and
the natural basis of politics is the family. The family should
be the basis of all institutions. A universal effect denotes a
coextensive cause. These things that you notice proceed
from the social principle itself, which has no force, because it
is based on independent opinion, and the right of private
judgment is the forerunner of individualism. There is less
wisdom in looking for the blessing of security from the intel-
ligence and capacity of the majority than in depending upon
the intelligence of institutions and the capacity of one single
man for the blessing of security. It is easier to find wisdom
in one man than in a whole nation. The peoples have but a
blind heart to guide them ; they feel, but they do not see.
A government must see, and must not be swayed by senti-
ments. There is therefore an evident contradiction between
the first impulses of the masses and the action of authority
which must direct their energy and give it unity. To find a
great prince is a great chance (to use your language), but to
trust your destinies to any assembly of men, even if they are
honest, is madness.
" France is mad at this moment ! Alas ! you are as thor-
oughly convinced of this as I. If all men who really be-
lieve what they say, as you do, would set the example in
their own circle; if every intelligent thinker would set his
hand to raising once more the altars of the great spiritual
republic, of the one Church which has directed humanity,
we might see once more in France the miracles wrought there
by our fathers."
" What would you have, M. le Cure ? " said Gerard, " if one
must speak to you as in the confessional I look on faith as a
lie which you consciously tell yourself, on hope as a lie about
228 THE COUNTRY PARSON.
the future, and on this charity of yours as a child's trick ;
one is a good boy, for the sake of the jam. ' '
"And yet, monsieur, when hope rocks us we sleep well,"
said Mme. Graslin.
Roubaud, who was about to speak, supported by a glance
from Grossetlte and the cur6, stopped short, however, at the
words.
"Is it any fault of ours," said Clousier, "if Jesus Christ
had not time to formulate a system of government in ac-
cordance with His teaching, as Moses did and Confucius
the two greatest legislators whom the world has seen, for
the Jews and the Chinese still maintain their national exist-
ence, though the first are scattered all over the earth, and the
second an isolated people ? "
"Ah! you are giving me a task indeed," said the cur6
candidly, "but I shall triumph, I shall convert all of you.
You are much nearer the faith than you think. Truth lurks
beneath the lie; come forward but a step, and you re-
turn ! "
And with this cry from the cure the conversation took a
fresh direction.
The next morning before M. Grossetgte went, he promised
to take an active share in Veronique's schemes so soon as they
should be judged practicable. Mme. Graslin and Gerard rode
beside his traveling carriage as far as the point where the cross-
road joined the high-road from Bordeaux to Lyons. Gerard
was so eager to see the place, and Veronique so anxious to
show it to him, that this ride had been planned overnight.
After they took leave of the kind old man, they galloped down
into the great plain and skirted the hillsides that lay between
the chateau and the Living Rock. The surveyor recognized
the rock embankment which Farrabesche had pointed out ; it
stood up like the lowest course of masonry under the founda-
tions of the hills, in such a manner that when the bed of this
indestructible canal of nature's making should be cleared out,
MADAME GRASLIN AT MONT&GNAC. 229
and the water-courses regulated so as not to choke it, irrigation
would actually be facilitated by that long channel which lay
about ten feet above the surface of the plain. The first thing
to be done was to estimate the volume of water in the Gabou,
and to make certain that the sides of the valley could hold it ;
no decision could be made till this was known.
Veronique gave a horse to Farrabesche, who was to accom-
pany Gerard and acquaint him with the least details which he
himself had observed. After some days of consideration
Gerard thought the base of either parallel chains of hill solid
enough (albeit of different material) to hold the water.
In the January of the following year, a wet season, Gerard
calculated the probable amount of water discharged by the
Gabou, and found that, when the three water-courses had been
diverted into the torrent, the total amount would be sufficient
to water an area three times as great as the plain of Montdgnac.
The dams across the Gabou, the masonry and engineering
works needed to bring the water-supply of the three little
valleys into the plain, should not cost more than sixty thou-
sand francs ; for the surveyor discovered a quantity of chalky
deposit on the common, so that lime would be cheap, and the
forest being so near at hand, stone and timber would cost
nothing even for transport. All the preparations could be
made before the Gabou ran dry, so that when the important
work should be begun it should quickly be finished. But the
plain was another matter. Gerard considered that there the
first preparation would cost at least two hundred thousand
francs, sowing and planting apart.
The plain was to be divided into four squares of two hun-
dred and fifty acres each. There was no question of breaking
up the waste ; the first thing to do was to remove the largest
flints. Navvies would be employed to dig a great number of
trenches and to line the channels with stone to keep the water
in, for the water must be made to flow or to stand as required.
All this work called for active, devoted, and painstaking
230 THE COUNTRY PARSON.
workers. Chance so ordered it that the plain was a straight-
forward piece of work, a level stretch, and the water with a
ten-foot fall could be distributed at will. There was nothing
to prevent the finest results in farming the land ; here there
might be just such a splendid green carpet as in North Italy,
a source of wealth and of pride to Lombardy. Gerard sent