precursor of Bonaparte. But the evil has attained its plenitude since
the monstrous institution of the obligatory enlistment. The shame of
emperors and of republics is to have made it an obligation for men to
kill. In the ages called barbarous, cities and princes entrusted their
defence to mercenaries, who fought prudently. In a great battle only
five or six men were killed. And when knights went to the wars, at least
they were not forced to do it; they died for their pleasure. They were
good for nothing else. Nobody in the time of Saint Louis would have
thought of sending to battle a man of learning. And the laborer was
not torn from the soil to be killed. Nowadays it is a duty for a poor
peasant to be a soldier. He is exiled from his house, the roof of which
smokes in the silence of night; from the fat prairies where the oxen
graze; from the fields and the paternal woods. He is taught how to kill
men; he is threatened, insulted, put in prison and told that it is
an honor; and, if he does not care for that sort of honor, he is
fusilladed. He obeys because he is terrorized, and is of all domestic
animals the gentlest and most docile. We are warlike in France, and we
are citizens. Another reason to be proud, this being a citizen! For the
poor it consists in sustaining and preserving the wealthy in their power
and their laziness. The poor must work for this, in presence of the
majestic quality of the law which prohibits the wealthy as well as the
poor from sleeping under the bridges, from begging in the streets, and
from stealing bread. That is one of the good effects of the Revolution.
As this Revolution was made by fools and idiots for the benefit of those
who acquired national lands, and resulted in nothing but making the
fortune of crafty peasants and financiering bourgeois, the Revolution
only made stronger, under the pretence of making all men equal, the
empire of wealth. It has betrayed France into the hands of the men of
wealth. They are masters and lords. The apparent government, composed of
poor devils, is in the pay of the financiers. For one hundred years, in
this poisoned country, whoever has loved the poor has been considered
a traitor to society. A man is called dangerous when he says that there
are wretched people. There are laws against indignation and pity, and
what I say here could not go into print."

Choulette became excited and waved his knife, while under the wintry
sunlight passed fields of brown ea