penned like sheep by the force of circumstances, as our fathers were
by the rule of the lords. As for me, what do I care what shackles they
are that keep me here? let it be the law of public necessity or the
tyranny of the old lords, it is all the same; we are condemned to dig
the soil forever. There, where we are born, there we dig it, that
earth! and spade it, and manure it, and delve in it, for you who are
born rich just as we are born poor. The masses will always be what
they are, and stay what they are. The number of us who manage to rise
is nothing like the number of you who topple down! We know that well
enough, if we have no education! You mustn't be after us with your
sheriff all the time,--not if you're wise. We let you alone, and you
must let us alone. If not, and things get worse, you'll have to feed
us in your prisons, where we'd be much better off than in our homes.
You want to remain our masters, and we shall always be enemies, just
as we were thirty years ago. You have everything, we have nothing; you
can't expect we should ever be friends."

"That's what I call a declaration of war," said the general.

"Monseigneur," retorted Fourchon, "when Les Aigues belonged to that
poor Madame (God keep her soul and forgive her the sins of her youth!)
we were happy. _She_ let us get our food from the fields and our fuel
from the forest; and was she any the poorer for it? And you, who are
at least as rich as she, you hunt us like wild beasts, neither more
nor less, and drag the poor before the courts. Well, evil will come of
it! you'll be the cause of some great calamity. Haven't I just seen
your keeper, that shuffling Vatel, half kill a poor old woman for a
stick of wood? It is such fellows as that who make you an enemy to the
poor; and the talk is very bitter against you. They curse you every
bit as hard as they used to bless the late Madame. The curse of the