, blasphemous,
lachrymal representations?

Yes--a sub-prefect, a mayor, and an officer of the _gendarmerie_, have
signed a document stating that they had seen a picture of Christ
shedding tears of blood!

When archbishops order public prayers and thanksgivings for the renewal
of these pasquinades, this ridiculous mockery, can one be astonished, I
say, at the state of religious ignorance and blindness of our peasantry?
Such, with a few wretched prints representing Napoleon passing the Alps
seated on an eagle; Poniatowsky and his white horse attempting to cross
the Oder; Cambronne, with imperial moustachios, on his knees repeating
the celebrated _mot_ which he never said: "_La garde meurt et ne se rend
pas_," &c.,--such, I am grieved to confess, is the miserable
intellectual food, the wretched mental and moral stock of human and
religious knowledge that supplies the literary and artistic wants of
the greater portion of the peasants of our departments.

At these fairs all the farm servants are engaged; those who wish to try
a change of masters, or hire themselves merely for the harvest, assemble
in the open space near the church, and then offer to those who require
them, their brawny arms, and their farming acquirements. The most
celebrated of these fairs is that held on the First of September, to
which whole hamlets send all their able-bodied men and women, who hire
themselves to the great proprietors for the _vendange_--for this in
Burgundy and Le Morvan is the great work, the chief event of the year;
it is on the _vendange_ that depend the commerce, the tranquillity and
happiness of the country.

Monsieur B.... is ruined if the sun is obscured by clouds. Monsieur
D.... who has cunningly laid his hands upon all the barrels within
thirty miles round, will put a pistol to his head if he cannot sell his
army of hogsheads. This one relies upon his vineyard for paying his
debts--another cannot marry unless he makes three hundred tierces of
wine. Eight out of twelve, in short, reckon upon the produce of their
vines to buy a new carriage or to be saved from prison; and the agonised
mariners of the wrecked _Medusa_ never cast their eyes with more
intense anxiety towards the horizon than do these proprietors of our
vineyards every morning before the vintage.

If it looks like rain no sunflower is more yellow than their
countenances; if the cold is unusual every face is pale, and should a
frost appear imminent, those whose a