ow passed
into the condition of an instinctive idea. That idea is bred in the
peasant blood, just as the idea of superiority was once bred in noble
blood. The revolution of 1789 was the retaliation of the vanquished. The
peasants then set foot in possession of the soil which the feudal law
had denied them for over twelve hundred years. Hence their desire for
land, which they now cut up among themselves until actually they divide
a furrow into two parts; which, by the bye, often hinders or prevents
the collection of taxes, for the value of such fractions of property is
not sufficient to pay the legal costs of recovering them."

"Very true, for the obstinacy of the small owners--their aggressiveness,
if you choose--on this point is so great that in at least one thousand
cantons of the three thousand of French territory, it is impossible
for a rich man to buy an inch of land from a peasant," said Blondet,
interrupting the abbe. "The peasants who are willing to divide up
their scraps of land among themselves would not sell a fraction on any
condition or at any price to the middle classes. The more money the
rich man offers, the more the vague uneasiness of the peasant increases.
Legal dispossession alone is able to bring the landed property of the
peasant into the market. Many persons have noticed this fact without
being able to find a reason for it."

"This is the reason," said the abbe, rightly believing that a pause
with Blondet was equivalent to a question: "twelve centuries have done
nothing for a caste whom the historic spectacle of civilization has
never yet diverted from its one predominating thought,--a caste which
still wears proudly the broad-brimmed hat of its masters, ever since
an abandoned fashion placed it upon their heads. That all-pervading
thought, the roots of which are in the bowels of the people, and which
attached them so vehemently to Napoleon (who was personally less to them
than he thought he was) and which explains the miracle of his return in
1815,--that desire for land is the sole motive power of the peasant's
being. In the eyes of the masses Napoleon, ever one with them through
his million of soldiers, is still the king born of the Revolution; the
man who gave them possession of the soil and sold to them the national
domains. His anointing was saturated with that idea."

"An idea to which 1814 dealt a blow, an idea which monarchy should hold
sacred," said Blondet, quickly; "for the people may