Fourchon; "the sign over the door has changed, that's
true, but the wine is the same,--to-day is the younger brother of
yesterday, that's all. Put that in your newspaper! Are we poor folks
free? We still belong to the same parish, and its lord is always
there,--I call him Toil. The hoe, our sole property, has never left our
hands. Let it be the old lords or the present taxes which take the best
of our earnings, the fact remains that we sweat our lives out in toil."

"But you could undertake a business, and try to make your fortune," said
Blondet.

"Try to make my fortune! And where shall I try? If I wish to leave my
own province, I must get a passport, and that costs forty sous. Here's
forty years that I've never had a slut of a forty-sous piece jingling
against another in my pocket. If you want to travel you need as many
crowns as there are villages, and there are mighty few Fourchons who
have enough to get to six of 'em. It is only the draft that gives us a
chance to get away. And what good does the army do us? The colonels live
by the solider, just as the rich folks live by the peasant; and out of
every hundred of 'em you won't find more than one of our breed. It is
just as it is the world over, one rolling in riches, for a hundred down
in the mud. Why are we in the mud? Ask God and the usurers. The best we
can do is to stay in our own parts, where we are penned like sheep
by the force of circumstances, as our fathers were by the rule of the
lords. As for me, what do I care what shackles they are that keep me
here? let it be the law of public necessity or the tyranny of the old
lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig the soil forever.
There, where we are born, there we dig it, that earth! and spade it,
and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are born rich just as we are
born poor. The masses will always be what they are, and stay what they
are. The number of us who manage to rise is nothing like the number of
you who topple down! We know that well enough, if we have no education!
You mustn't be after us with your sheriff all the time,--not if you're
wise. We let you alone, and you must let us alone. If not, and things
get worse, you'll have to feed us in your prisons, where we'd be much
better off than in our homes. You want to remain our masters, and we
shall always be enemies, just as we were thirty years ago. You have
everything, we have nothing; you can't expect we should ever be
friends."

"Tha