for high farming and manure from Paris, which gives 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 consequent
on the heating diet and confinement to cowsheds. 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 salt-
fish, and what is going on round Paris is happening also about
all large towns. The evils of the minute subdivision of landed
property are extending round a hundred French cities; some
day all France will be eaten up by them.
"In 1800, according to Chaptal, there were about five mill-
ion 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 milk
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."
<f 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.
That is the pestle which is constantly grinding the country to
208 THE COUNTRY PARSON
powder, giving 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 Succes-
sions 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 till 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. Grossetete 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 !
"Monsieur has just said something about the falling off of
cattle and horses," Clousier continued, looking at Grossetete ;
"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 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."
THE COUNTRY PARSON 209
"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 Amer-
ican 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 pos-
sesses forty-nine million hectares of land ; for the sake of con-
venience, let us say forty, deducting something for roads and
highroads, 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 mill-
ions, 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 owner-
ship in perpetuity is robbery. The Saint-Simonians have
begun already."
"There spoke the magistrate," said Grossetete, "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 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 in-
etead of in kind
"There is another Immense blunder in our legislation/'
210 THE COUNTRY PARSON
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 Revolution a
direct consequence of the sale of the national lands. Only
those who have no idea of the state of things in country dis-
tricts 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 with-
drawn from circulation every year. The science of political
economy 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 every seven } r ears, 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 agricul-
tural 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, commerce would be at a standstill. The
THE COUNTRY PARSON 211
proletariat deprives itself of six hundred million francs of
wages. These six hundred millions of initial loss that repre-
sent, for an economist, twelve hundred millions of loss of
benefit derived from circulation, 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 differ-
ences 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 comminu-
tion 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 tradespeople, 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 land-
owners, 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
proletariat 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 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
unfortunate. 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,
212 THE COUNTRY PARSON
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 he 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
a whole nation astray; and the press which pleads for
common-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 Greece, is it
not ? Clearly there was an impolitic side to the Revolution of
July," he added aloud, after going through Grossetete reason-
ings. 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;
THE COUNTRY PARSON 213
K> 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 civ-
ilize. 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 bour-
geoisie. 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 fulfil 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 Government, 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. Cap-
ital with them is adventurous, and always moving ; with us it
is shy and suspicious. Here is corroboration of M. Grosse-
tete's statements about the loss to industry of the peasants'
capital; I can sketch the difference in a few words. English
capital, which is constantly circulating, has created ten mill-
iards 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
that 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 insti-
tutions best adapted to counteract it. Truly, Cromwell was
a great legislator. He, one man, made England what she is
IS
214 THE COUNTRY PARSON
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-blo\v
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 indifferent in matters of re-
ligion . . . and you, monsieur ? v he asked questioningly,
. turning to Gerard.
"A Protestant," said Grossetete.
"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 antago-
nism between Russia and the Catholic countries on the shores
of the Mediterranean ; a schism of little real importance
divides the Greek Church from the Latin, for the great mis-
fortune of humanity."
"Each preaches for his saint," said Mme. Graslin, smiling.
"M. Grossetete thinks of lost milliards; M. Clousier of law
in confusion ; the doctor sees in legislation a question of tem-
peraments ; M. le Cure sees in religion an obstacle in the way
of a good understanding between France and Russia."
"Please add, madame," said G6rard, "that in the sequestra-
tion 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 Councillors of State who devised
laws in the time of the Emperor and the Corps Ugislatif,
THE COUNTRY PARSON 215
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 Cham-
ber 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 access of lofty
patriotism, "how is it that minds so enlightened" he indi-
cated Clousier, Eoubaud, 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 development of pride and material interests '(which are
a sort of belief) can only be attained here by sentiments in-
duced 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
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
individual 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
co-extensive 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 in-
telligence 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
216 THE COUNTRY PARSON
but a blind heart to guide them; they feel, but they do not
see. A government must see, and must not be swayed by sen-
timents. 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 believe
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 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.
Eoubaud, who was about to speak, supported by a glance
from Grossetete and the cure, stopped short at the words.
"Is it any fault of ours," said Clousier, "if Jesus Christ
had not time to formulate a system of government in accord-
ance 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 existence, 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 cure can-
didly, "but I shall triumph, I shall convert all of you. . . .
You are nearer the Faith than you think. Truth lurks be-
neath the lie ; come forward but a step, and you return !"
And with this cry from the cure the conversation took a
fresh direction.
THE COUNTRY PARSON 217
The next morning before M. Grossetete 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 highroad 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 sur-
veyor recognized the rock embankment which Farrabesche
had pointed out; it stood up like the lowest course of ma-
sonry under the foundations of the hills, in such a sort that
when the bed of this indestructible canal of nature^ making
should be cleared out, 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 suf-
ficient to water an area three times as great as the plain of
Montegnac. 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 thousand 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
218 THE COUNTRY PARSON
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
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 to
his late district for an old and experienced foreman, Fresquin
by name.
Mme. Graslin, therefore, wrote to ask Grossetete to nego-
tiate for her a loan of two hundred and fifty thousand francs