“I am sure that the money could not be put to a better use,” said the justice of peace.  “In my opinion the abuse of the right of way is one of the worst nuisances in a country district.  One-tenth of the cases that come before the court are caused by unfair easement.  The rights of property are infringed in this way almost with impunity in many and many a commune.  A respect for the law and a respect for property are ideas too often disregarded in France, and it is most important that they should be inculcated.  Many people think that there is something dishonorable in assisting the law to take its course.  ’Go and be hanged somewhere else,’ is a saying which seems to be dictated by an unpraiseworthy generosity of feeling; but at the bottom it is nothing but a hypocritical formula—­a sort of veil which we throw over our own selfishness.  Let us own to it, we lack patriotism!  The true patriot is the citizen who is so deeply impressed with a sense of the importance of the laws that he will see them carried out even at his own cost and inconvenience.  If you let the criminal go in peace, are you not making yourself answerable for the crimes he will commit?”

“It is all of a piece,” said Benassis.  “If the mayors kept their roads in better order, there would not be so many footpaths.  And if the members of Municipal Councils knew a little better, they would uphold the small landowner and the mayor when the two combine to oppose the establishment of unfair easements.  The fact that chateau, cottage, field, and tree are all equally sacred would then be brought home in every way to the ignorant; they would be made to understand that Right is just the same in all cases, whether the value of the property in question be large or small.  But such salutary changes cannot be brought about all at once.  They depend almost entirely on the moral condition of the population, which we can never completely reform without the potent aid of the cures.  This remark does not apply to you in any way, M. Janvier.”

“Nor do I take it to myself,” laughed the cure.  “Is not my heart set on bringing the teaching of the Catholic religion to co-operate with your plans of administration?  For instance, I have often tried, in my pulpit discourses on theft, to imbue the folk of this parish with the very ideas of Right to which you have just given utterance.  For truly, God does not estimate theft by the value of the thing stolen, He looks at the thief.  That has been the gist of the parables which I have tried to adapt to the comprehension of my parishioners.”

“You have succeeded, sir,” said Cambon.  “I know the change you have brought about in people’s ways of looking at things, for I can compare the Commune as it is now with the Commune as it used to be.  There are certainly very few places where the laborers are as careful as ours are about keeping the time in their working hours.  The cattle are well looked after; any damage that they do is done by accident.  There is no pilfering in the woods, and finally you have made our peasants clearly understand that the leisure of the rich is the reward of a thrifty and hard-working life.”