“But to resume.  Our farms were ready by the end of the fourth year.  Our wheat harvest seemed miraculous to the people in the district, heavy as the first crop off the land ought to be.  How often during that year I trembled for the success of my work!  Rain or drought might spoil everything by diminishing the belief in me that was already felt.  When we began to grow wheat, it necessitated the mill that you have seen, which brings me in about five hundred francs a year.  So the peasants say that ‘there is luck about me’ (that is the way they put it), and believe in me as they believe in their relics.  These new undertakings—­the farms, the mill, the plantations, and the roads —­have given employment to all the various kinds of workers whom I had called in.  Although the buildings fully represent the value of the sixty thousand francs of capital, which we sunk in the district, the outlay was more than returned to us by the profits on the sales which the consumers occasioned.  I never ceased my efforts to put vigor into this industrial life which was just beginning.  A nurseryman took my advice and came to settle in the place, and I preached wholesome doctrine to the poor concerning the planting of fruit trees, in order that some day they should obtain a monopoly of the sale of fruit in Grenoble.

“‘You take your cheeses there as it is,’ I used to tell them, ’why not take poultry, eggs, vegetables, game, hay and straw, and so forth?’ All my counsels were a source of fortune; it was a question of who should follow them first.  A number of little businesses were started; they went on at first but slowly, but from day to day their progress became more rapid; and now sixty carts full of the various products of the district set out every Monday for Grenoble, and there is more buckwheat grown for poultry food than they used to sow for human consumption.  The trade in timber grew to be so considerable that it was subdivided, and since the fourth year of our industrial era, we have had dealers in firewood, squared timber, planks, bark, and later on, in charcoal.  In the end four new sawmills were set up, to turn out the planks and beams of timber.

“When the ex-mayor had acquired a few business notions, he felt the necessity of learning to read and write.  He compared the prices that were asked for wood in various neighborhoods, and found such differences in his favor, that he secured new customers in one place after another, and now a third of the trade in the department passes through his hands.  There has been such a sudden increase in our traffic that we find constant work for three wagon-builders and two harness-makers, each of them employing three hands at least.  Lastly, the quantity of ironware that we use is so large that an agricultural implement and tool-maker has removed into the town, and is very well satisfied with the result.