with his mistress, "folds his arms,
stops, looks serious and thoughtful; he looks a long, long time, and
seems to forget himself; at last, if he fancies himself overlooked, if
he perceives any body passing, he moves slowly away; after a few steps,
he stops, turns round, and casts upon his land one last profound and
melancholy look: but to the keen-sighted, that look is full of passion,
full of heart, full of devotion. If that be not love, (!) by what token
shall we know it in this world? It is love--do not laugh." It were
indeed very easy to laugh, but, thus intreated, we forbear, and proceed.
To love is to covet possession. To have a bit of land, means "you shall
not be a mercenary, to be hired to-day and turned off to-morrow. You
shall not be a serf for your daily bread. You shall be free!" To acquire
that land, the peasant will consent to any thing, even to lose sight of
it. To obtain it he will sell his life, and go to meet death in Africa.
The peasant is very aspiring; he has been a soldier; he believes in
impossibilities. The acquisition of land is for him a combat; "he goes
to it as he would to the charge, and will not retreat. It is his battle
of Austerlitz; he will win it; it will be a desperate struggle, he
knows, but he has seen plenty of these under his old commander;" and
accordingly this brave and warlike peasant borrows money of a usurer at
seven, eight, or ten per cent, to purchase a piece of earth that shall
bring him in two. "Heroic man--are you surprised, if, meeting him on
that land which devours him, you find him so gloomy?" Certainly not. "If
you meet him," says M. Michelet--heroic and sublime as he is--"do not
ask him your road; if he answers, he may perhaps induce you to turn your
back on the place you are going to." It is the way with atrabilious
heroes. What is to be done? "We must take serious measures for defending
the nobility;" that is to say--the peasantry who are in the hands of the
usurers. Alter the laws. This "vast and profound," but very much
involved "legion of peasant-soldier proprietors," are the People: the
people are France. France is a principle, "a great political principle.
It must be defended at any cost. As a principle, she must live. _Live
for the salvation of the world (!!)_ In the midst of his difficulties,
the peasant learns to envy the town workman. He sees him on Sunday
walking about like a gentleman, and thinks he is as free as a bird; he
believes that a man who carries