“Then I turned my attention to another kind of production, that should increase the welfare rather than the wealth of these poor folk.  I have brought nothing from without into this district; I have simply encouraged the people to seek beyond its limits for a market for their produce, a measure that could not but increase their prosperity in a way that they felt immediately.  They had no idea of the fact, but they themselves were my apostles, and their works preached my doctrines.  Something else must also be borne in mind.  We are barely five leagues from Grenoble.  There is plenty of demand in a large city for produce of all kinds, but not every commune is situated at the gates of a city.  In every similar undertaking the nature, situation, and resources of the country must be taken into consideration, and a careful study must be made of the soil, of the people themselves, and of many other things; and no one should expect to have vines grow in Normandy.  So no tasks can be more various than those of government, and its general principles must be few in number.  The law is uniform, but not so the land and the minds and customs of those who dwell in it; and the administration of the law is the art of carrying it out in such a manner that no injury is done to people’s interests.  Every place must be considered separately.

“On the other side of the mountain at the foot of which our deserted village lies, they find it impossible to use wheeled plows, because the soil is not deep enough.  Now if the mayor of the commune were to take it into his head to follow in our footsteps, he would be the ruin of his neighborhood.  I advised him to plant vineyards; they had a capital vintage last year in the little district, and their wine is exchanged for our corn.

“Then, lastly, it must be remembered that my words carried a certain weight with the people to whom I preached, and that we were continually brought into close contact.  I cured my peasants’ complaints; an easy task, for a nourishing diet is, as a rule, all that is needed to restore them to health and strength.  Either through thrift, or through sheer poverty, the country people starve themselves; any illness among them is caused in this way, and as a rule they enjoy very fair health.

“When I first decided to devote myself to this life of obscure renunciation, I was in doubt for a long while whether to become a cure, a country doctor, or a justice of the peace.  It is not without reason that people speak collectively of the priest, the lawyer, and the doctor as ’men of the black robe’—­so the saying goes.  They represent the three principal elements necessary to the existence of society—­conscience, property, and health.  At one time the first, and at a later period the second, was all-important in the State.  Our predecessors on this earth thought, perhaps not without reason, that the priest, who prescribed what men should think, ought to be paramount; so the priest