ome could not, some would not, go and
make the little mark of which I speak. Many more could by law make it,
and would have made it, if they had thought it useful to any possible
purpose under the sun. One-sixth, I say, had made their mark for the
aged and money-lending attorney, and one-sixth for the venerable but
avaricious dealer in herds, and since the first sixth was imperceptibly
larger than the second it was the lawyer, not the merchant, who stood to
make the laws for the people. But not only to make laws: he was also in
some mystic way the Persona and Representative of all the plain. The
long sun-lit fields; the infinite past--Carolingian, enormous; the
delicate fronds of young trees; the distant sight of the mountains,
which is the note of all that land; the invasions it had suffered, the
conquests it might yet achieve; its soul and its material self, were all
summed up in the solicitor, not in the farmer, and he was to vote on
peace or war, on wine or water, on God or no God in the schools. For the
people of the plain were self-governing; they had no lords.

Of my two companions, the one had voted for the cow-buyer, but the other
for the scribbler upon parchment, and they discussed their action
without heat, gently and with many reasons.

The one said: "It cannot be doubted that the solidarity of society
demands that the homogeneity of economic interests should be recognised
by the magistrate." The other said: "The first need is rather that the
historic continuity of society should be affirmed by the momentary
depositaries of the executive."

For these two men were of some education, and saw things from a higher
standpoint than the peasants around us, who continued to discourse, now
angrily, now merrily, but always loudly and rapidly, upon the
insignificant matter of their lives: that is, strong, red, bubbling
wine, healthy and well-fed beef, rich land and housing, the marriage of
daughters, and the putting forward of sons.

Then one of the two, who had long guessed by my dress and face from what
country I came, said to me: "And you, how is it in your country?" I told
him we met from time to time, upon occasions not less often than seven
years apart, and did just as they had done. That one-sixth of us voted
one way and one-sixth the other; the first, let us say, for a
moneylender, and the second for a man remarkable for motor-cars or
famous for the wealth of his mother; and whichever sixth was
imperceptibl