t was stupid of the Government
because it put them for a time under the thumb of Boulanger. It was
stupid of Boulanger, because it put the Comte de Paris at once on a
pedestal and forced him before France and Europe into the position of a
saviour of society, for whom all the conservative forces of French
society must henceforth inevitably work. Whatever becomes of Boulanger
in the next elections, he has condemned the Opportunists irretrievably
either to hew wood for the Socialists or to carry water for the
Monarchists. And with them he has condemned himself. Wait and see if I
am not right.

'Come and see me in Picardy. You will find more royalist farmers than I
could have believed possible six years ago. If the Comte de Chambord had
not kept the Legitimist country gentlemen so much apart as a caste from
the peasants, there would be nothing easier than to sweep the country
with a monarchist propaganda. It was the royalist peasantry who brought
about the great emigration in 1789, long before the Terror, by burning
and pillaging the chateaux all over France under orders from Paris,
which they believed to be orders from the king. What puzzles them now is
the notion lurking down in the bottom of their minds that the
restoration of the monarchy will somehow put the country gentlemen over
them, and this has much to do with making them, not republicans, but
imperialists. As to the republic the overthrow of Grevy had a very bad
effect upon the peasants and the farmers in my part of the country, and
I believe it had everywhere.'

'Was M. Grevy, then, popular with them?'

'No, it was not that at all. It was the feeling that the Republic meant
changes and uncertainty. A farmer--a fair specimen of this class in my
country--expressed this to me in his own fashion only the other day. I
asked him if he was coming to see the President here at Calais. "What is
the use of that?" he said, "it is money out of pocket, and for what? Who
knows how long he will be President? There was Grevy. Here is Boulanger.
All that can do no good. With these short leases what can be done for
the land?" There you have it. In Picardy and in Artois the people have
long memories about the land. All these countries, as you know, were
fought over again and again. There were so many wars that people got out
of the way of making long leases, and the land suffered accordingly. In
the last century these provinces, now so well and so richly cultivated,
were in a ve