as much nearly as on the writer's; and the inmates and visitors of the
village-inn and coffee-house are individualized with an anatomical
intensity fringing on the brutal. Like the _Village Cure_ and the
_Country Doctor_, the _Peasants_ is a novel with a purpose and a
warning. The author preaches against the dividing up of the land; and
advocates agriculture on a large scale by a reversion to the old
estates with their castles and forests. As adjuvants to these he
pleads for the development of Catholicism, a wider influence of the
clergy both in education and private life. His picture of peasant
avarice has been repeated by later writers, Guy de Maupassant and
Zola. True in many particulars, it is traced by a prejudiced mind, and
cannot be accepted as thoroughly representative.

At Rome he found Madame Hanska, and stayed with her there till May.
Instead of describing the Eternal City to his sister, he referred her
to de Lamennais' accounts, himself being fully occupied with his
companion and sight-seeing. He was duly received by the Pope, and
obtained a small crown chaplet for his mother, together with His
Holiness' blessing. Saint Peter's surpassed his expectations, and the
choir's _Miserere_ so delighted him that he went to hear it a second
time in lieu of that of the Sixtine Chapel. The journey back through
Genoa, the Grisons, and Bale was a pretext for continuing his
bric-a-brac purchases, Holbein's _Saint Peter_ being added to his
treasures.

Reaching Paris at last, he now took up his pen with his old ardour.
Fresh pledges for the future had been given him by Eve. These served
to lure him onward; and behind him were the creditors who had lent him
money for his trip, and were wanting some of it restored. At this
period Madame Hanska's funds and his own were partly associated. Some