lines of the girl's fluttering muslin gown, as he plucked at his
mustache. "She should always wear white and gold--what is that
stuff?--and be lit up like that with a kind of goddess-like anger. She
is wrong, however," he went on, a moment later; "those of us who live
here aren't really barbarians, only we get used to things. It's the
peasants themselves that force us; they wouldn't stand interference. A
peasant is a kind of king on his own domain; he does anything he likes,
short of murder, and he doesn't always stop at that."

"But surely the Government--at least their Church, ought to teach
them--"

"Oh, their Church! they laugh at their cures--till they come to die.
He's a heathen, that's what the French peasant is--there's lots of the
middle ages abroad up there in the country. Along here, in the coast
villages, the nineteenth century has crept in a bit, humanizing them,
but the _fonds_ is always the same; they're by nature avaricious,
sordid, cruel; they'll do anything for money; there isn't anything
sacred for them except their pocket."

A few days later, in our friend the cobbler we found a more sympathetic
listener. "Dame! I also used to beat my wife," he said,
contemplatively, as he scratched his herculean head, "but that was when
I was a Christian, when I went to confession; for the confessional was
made for that, _c'est pour laver le linge sale des consciences, ca_"
(interjecting his epigram). "But now--now that I am a free-thinker, I
have ceased all that; I don't beat her," pointing to his old wife, "and
neither do I drink or swear."

"It's true, he's good--he is, now," the old wife nodded, with her slit