hinking, was entirely dependent on a
general improvement in the conditions of life. The presence of a butcher
in the district says as much for its intelligence as for its wealth. The
worker feeds himself, and a man who feeds himself thinks. I had made a
very careful study of the soil, for I foresaw a time when it would be
necessary to grow wheat. I was sure of launching the place in a very
prosperous agricultural career, and of doubling the population, when
once it had begun to work. And now the time had come.

"M. Gravier, of Grenoble, owned a great deal of land in the commune,
which brought him in no rent, but which might be turned into
corn-growing land. He is the head of a department in the Prefecture, as
you know. It was a kindness for his own countryside quite as much as my
earnest entreaties that won him over. He had very benevolently yielded
to my importunities on former occasions, and I succeeded in making it
clear to him that in so doing he had wrought unconsciously for his own
benefit. After several days spent in pleadings, consultation, and talk,
the matter was thrashed out. I undertook to guarantee him against
all risks in the undertaking, from which his wife, a woman of no
imagination, sought to frighten him. He agreed to build four farmhouses
with a hundred acres of land attached to each, and promised to advance
the sums required to pay for clearing the ground, for seeds, ploughing
gear, and cattle, and for making occupation roads.

"I myself also started two farms, quite as much for the sake of bringing
my waste land into cultivation as with a view to giving an object-lesson
in the use of modern methods in agriculture. In six weeks' time the
population of the town increased to three hundred people. Homes for
several families must be built on the six farms; there was a vast
quantity of land to be broken up; the work called for laborers.
Wheelwrights, drainmakers, journeymen, and laborers of all kinds flocked
in. The road to Grenoble was covered with carts that came and went. All
the countryside was astir. The circulation of money had made every one
anxious to earn it, apathy had ceased, the place had awakened.

"The story of M. Gravier, one of those who did so much for this canton,
can be concluded in a few words. In spite of cautious misgivings, not
unnatural in a man occupying an official position in a provincial
town, he advanced more than forty thousand francs, on the faith of my
promises, without k