“I happened on the other man after a fashion no whit less strange, but you might find the story tedious.  He is just an ordinary peasant, who discovered a cheaper way of making the great broad-brimmed hats that are worn in this part of the world.  He sells them in other cantons, and even sends them into Switzerland and Savoy.  So long as the quality and the low prices can be maintained, here are two inexhaustible sources of wealth for the canton, which suggested to my mind the idea of establishing three fairs in the year.  The prefect, amazed at our industrial progress, lent his aid in obtaining the royal ordinance which authorized them, and last year we held our three fairs.  They are known as far as Savoy as the Shoe Fair and the Hat Fair.

“The head clerk of a notary in Grenoble heard of these changes.  He was poor, but he was a well-educated, hardworking young fellow, and Mlle. Gravier was engaged to be married to him.  He went to Paris to ask for an authorization to establish himself here as a notary, and his request was granted.  As he had not to pay for his appointment, he could afford to build a house in the market square of the new town, opposite the house of the justice of the peace.  We have a market once a week, and a considerable amount of business is transacted in corn and cattle.

“Next year a druggist surely ought to come among us, and next we want a clockmaker, a furniture dealer, and a bookseller; and so, by degrees, we shall have all the desirable luxuries of life.  Who knows but that at last we shall have a number of substantial houses, and give ourselves all the airs of a small city?  Education has made such strides that there has never been any opposition made at the council-board when I proposed that we should restore our church and build a parsonage; nor when I brought forward a plan for laying out a fine open space, planted with trees, where the fairs could be held, and a further scheme for a survey of the township, so that its future streets should be wholesome, spacious, and wisely planned.

“This is how we came to have nineteen hundred hearths in the place of a hundred and thirty-seven; three thousand head of cattle instead of eight hundred; and for a population of seven hundred, no less than two thousand persons are living in the township, or three thousand, if the people down the valley are included.  There are twelve houses belonging to wealthy people in the Commune, there are a hundred well-to-do families, and two hundred more which are thriving.  The rest have their own exertions to look to.  Every one knows how to read and write, and we subscribe to seventeen different newspapers.

“We have poor people still among us—­there are far too many of them, in fact; but we have no beggars, and there is work enough for all.  I have so many patients that my daily round taxes the powers of two horses.  I can go anywhere for five miles round at any hour without fear; for if any one was minded to fire a shot at me, his life would not be worth ten minutes’ purchase.  The undemonstrative affection of the people is my sole gain from all these changes, except the radiant ‘Good-day, M. Benassis,’ that every one gives me as I pass.  You will understand, of course, that the wealth incidentally acquired through my model farms has only been a means and not an end.”