old lords who'll sustain us."

"That's true," said Courtecuisse; "none of the other land-owners
complain, it is only the Shopman; Monsieur de Soulanges and Monsieur
de Ronquerolles and others, they are satisfied. When I think that if
that cuirassier had only had the courage to let himself be killed like
the rest I should still be happy at the gate of the Avonne, and that
it was he that turned my life topsy-turvy, it just puts me beside
myself."

"They won't call out the troops for a Shopman who has set every one in
the district against him," said Godain. "The fault's his own; he tried
to ride over everybody here, and upset everything; and the government
will just say to him, 'Hush up.'"

"The government never says anything else; it can't, poor government!"
said Fourchon, seized with a sudden tenderness for the government.
"Yes, I pity it, that good government; it is very unlucky,--it hasn't
a penny, like us; but that's very stupid of a government that makes
the money itself, very stupid! Ah! if I were the government--"

"But," cried Courtecuisse, "they tell me in Ville-aux-Fayes that
Monsieur de Ronquerolles talked about our rights in the Assembly."

"That's in Monsieur Rigou's newspaper," said Vaudoyer, who in his
capacity of ex-field-keeper knew how to read and write; "I read it--"

In spite of his vinous tenderness, old Fourchon, like many of the
lower classes whose faculties are stimulated by drunkenness, was
following, with an intelligent eye and a keen ear, this curious