“The desire of gain develops a spirit of ambition, which has ever since impelled our workers to extend their field from the township to the canton, and from the canton to the department, so as to increase their profits by increasing their sales.  I had only to say a word to point out new openings to them, and their own sense did the rest.  Four years had been sufficient to change the face of the township.  When I had come through it first, I did not catch the slightest sound; but in less than five years from that time, there was life and bustle everywhere.  The gay songs, the shrill or murmuring sounds made by the tools in the workshops rang pleasantly in my ears.  I watched the comings and goings of a busy population congregated in the clean and wholesome new town, where plenty of trees had been planted.  Every one of them seemed conscious of a happy lot, every face shone with the content that comes through a life of useful toil.

“I look upon these five years as the first epoch of prosperity in the history of our town,” the doctor went on after a pause.  “During that time I have prepared the ground and sowed the seed in men’s minds as well as in the land.  Henceforward industrial progress could not be stayed, the population was bound to go forward.  A second epoch was about to begin.  This little world very soon desired to be better clad.  A shoemaker came, and with him a haberdasher, a tailor, and a hatter.  This dawn of luxury brought us a butcher and a grocer, and a midwife, who became very necessary to me, for I lost a great deal of time over maternity cases.  The stubbed wastes yielded excellent harvests, and the superior quality of our agricultural produce was maintained through the increased supply of manure.  My enterprise could now develop itself; everything followed on quite naturally.

“When the houses had been rendered wholesome, and their inmates gradually persuaded to feed and clothe themselves better, I wanted the dumb animals to feel the benefit of these beginnings of civilization.  All the excellence of cattle, whether as a race or as individuals, and, in consequence, the quality of the milk and meat, depends upon the care that is expended upon them.  I took the sanitation of cowsheds for the text of my sermons.  I showed them how an animal that is properly housed and well cared for is more profitable than a lean neglected beast, and the comparison wrought a gradual change for the better in the lot of the cattle in the Commune.  Not one of them was ill treated.  The cows and oxen were rubbed down as in Switzerland and Auvergne.  Sheep-folds, stables, byres, dairies, and barns were rebuilt after the pattern of the roomy, well-ventilated, and consequently healthy steadings that M. Gravier and I had constructed.  Our tenants became my apostles.  They made rapid converts of unbelievers, demonstrating the soundness of my doctrines by their prompt results.  I lent money to those who needed it, giving the preference to hardworking poor people, because they served as an example.  Any unsound or sickly cattle or beasts of poor quality were quickly disposed of by my advice, and replaced by fine specimens.  In this way our dairy produce came, in time, to command higher prices in the market than that sent by other communes.  We had splendid herds, and as a consequence, capital leather.