The count couldn’t help smiling; and that smile reassured the narrator.

“They have a way of cultivating which you will think very queer.  They don’t cultivate at all; that’s their style of farming.  The Turks and the Greeks, they eat onions or rise.  They get opium from poppies, and it gives them a fine revenue.  Then they have tobacco, which grows of itself, famous latakiah! and dates! and all kinds of sweet things that don’t need cultivation.  It is a country full of resources and commerce.  They make fine rugs at Smyrna, and not dear.”

“But,” persisted Leger, “if the rugs are made of wool they must come from sheep; and to have sheep you must have fields, farms, culture—­”

“Well, there may be something of that sort,” replied Georges.  “But their chief crop, rice, grows in the water.  As for me, I have only been along the coasts and seen the parts that are devastated by war.  Besides, I have the deepest aversion to statistics.”

“How about the taxes?” asked the farmer.

“Oh! the taxes are heavy; they take all a man has, and leave him the rest.  The pacha of Egypt was so struck with the advantages of that system, that, when I came away he was on the point of organizing his own administration on that footing—­”

“But,” said Leger, who no longer understood a single word, “how?”

“How?” said Georges.  “Why, agents go round and take all the harvests, and leave the fellahs just enough to live on.  That’s a system that does away with stamped papers and bureaucracy, the curse of France, hein?”

“By virtue of what right?” said Leger.

“Right? why it is a land of despotism.  They haven’t any rights.  Don’t you know the fine definition Montesquieu gives of despotism.  ’Like the savage, it cuts down the tree to gather the fruits.’  They don’t tax, they take everything.”

“And that’s what our rulers are trying to bring us to.  ‘Tax vobiscum,’ —­no, thank you!” said Mistigris.

“But that is what we are coming to,” said the count.  “Therefore, those who own land will do well to sell it.  Monsieur Schinner must have seen how things are tending in Italy, where the taxes are enormous.”

“Corpo di Bacco! the Pope is laying it on heavily,” replied Schinner.  “But the people are used to it.  Besides, Italians are so good-natured that if you let ’em murder a few travellers along the highways they’re contented.”

“I see, Monsieur Schinner,” said the count, “that you are not wearing the decoration you obtained in 1819; it seems the fashion nowadays not to wear orders.”

Mistigris and the pretended Schinner blushed to their ears.

“Well, with me,” said the artist, “the case is different.  It isn’t on account of fashion; but I don’t want to be recognized.  Have the goodness not to betray me, monsieur; I am supposed to be a little painter of no consequence,—­a mere decorator.  I’m on may way to a chateau where I mustn’t rouse the slightest suspicion.”