domestic habits and customs. They make no appeal to morality when
their daughters are seduced, unless the seducer is rich and timid.
Children, until the State takes possession of them, are used either
as capital or as instruments of convenience. Self-interest has become,
specially since 1789, the sole motive of the masses; they never ask if
an action is legal or immoral, but only if it is profitable. Morality,
which is not to be confounded with religion, begins only at a certain
competence,--just as one sees, in a higher sphere, how delicacy blossoms
in the soul when fortune decorates the furniture. A positively moral and
upright man is rare among the peasantry. Do you ask why? Among the
many reasons that may be given for this state of things, the principal
one is this: Through the nature of their social functions, the
peasants live a purely material life which approximates to that of
savages, and their constant union with nature tends to foster it. When
toil exhausts the body it takes from the mind its purifying action,
especially among the ignorant. The Abbe Brossette was right in saying
that the state policy of the peasant is his poverty.

Meddling in everybody's interests, Tonsard heard everybody's
complaints, and often instigated frauds to benefit the needy. His
wife, a kindly appearing woman, had a good word for evil-doers, and
never withheld either approval or personal help from her customers in
anything they undertook against the rich. This inn, a nest of vipers,
brisk and venomous, seething and active, was a hot-bed for the hatred
of the peasants and the workingmen against the masters and the
wealthy.

The prosperous life of the Tonsards was, therefore, an evil example.
Others asked themselves why they should not take their wood, as the
Tonsards did, from the forest; why not pasture their cows and have