for in this spirit France
is still governed at home. But if, on some fine morning, the legs should
suddenly wake up with a very positive opinion of their own, the results
may be awkward--not only for the government at Paris but for the rest of
Europe.

CHAPTER VII

IN THE AISNE

ST.-GOBAIN

The short railway journey from Amiens on the Somme to La Fere on the
Oise takes you through a country which, on a fine summer's morning,
reminds one of the old Kentuckian description of an agricultural
paradise--'tickle it with a hoe, and it laughs with a harvest.' As, in
one direction, Picardy extends into the modern Department of the
Pas-de-Calais, so in other directions it includes no inconsiderable part
of the modern Departments of the Oise and of the Aisne. In this way it
touches the central province of the Ile-de-France, the main body of
which is now divided into the three Departments of the Seine, the
Seine-et-Oise, and the Seine-et-Marne. From Amiens to La Fere,
therefore, the pulse of the French capital may be said to throb visibly
about you in the rural beauty of a region which owes its value and its
fertility less to the natural qualities of the soil than to the
quickening influences of the great metropolis. For centuries Paris lived
mainly on the Ile-de-France, and the Ile-de-France on Paris. Since the
steam-engine and the railway have opened, both to the province and to
the capital, the markets of all France and of all Europe, both the
province and the capital are infinitely more prosperous than in the old
days when the lack of communications and the lawlessness of men made
them dependent one upon the other. The steppes of Russia and the
prairies of America now compete with the grain-fields of the
Ile-de-France; the timber of the Baltic with its timber; and I have no
doubt that, during his six years in the prison of Ham, Louis Napoleon
drank there better Chambertin than ever found its way to the table of
the Grand Monarque at Versailles, after a certain enterprising peasant
walked all the way from his native province to the capital, beside his
oxcart laden with casks, to prove to the king the merits of the true
Burgundian vintage.

Certainly it would never occur to anybody now in Soissons or Laon to
make the journey to Paris, as people did a hundred and fifty years ago,
to drink the water of the Seine, as being 'the best in the world, and a
specific against burning fevers and obstructive ailments.'

Bu