present labour productive.”  The good Mathurin was not content with making these reflections.  He resolved to work by the day, and to save something from his wages to buy a spade and a sack of corn; without which things, he must give up his fine agricultural projects.  He acted so well, was so active and steady, that he soon saw himself in possession of the wished-for sack of corn.  “I shall take it to the mill,” said he, “and then I shall have enough to live upon till my field is covered with a rich harvest.”  Just as he was starting, Jerome came to borrow his treasure of him.  “If you will lend me this sack of corn,” said Jerome, “you will do me a great service; for I have some very lucrative work in view, which I cannot possibly undertake, for want of provisions to live upon until it is finished.”  “I was in the same case,” answered Mathurin, “and if I have now secured bread for several months, it is at the expense of my arms and my stomach.  Upon what principle of justice can it be devoted to the realisation of your enterprise instead of mine?”

You may well believe that the bargain was a long one.  However, it was finished at length, and on these conditions:—­

First—­Jerome promised to give back, at the end of the year, a sack of corn of the same quality, and of the same weight, without missing a single grain.  “This first clause is perfectly just,” said he, “for without it Mathurin would give, and not lend.”

Secondly—­He engaged to deliver five litres on every hectolitre.  “This clause is no less just than the other,” thought he; “for without it Mathurin would do me a service without compensation; he would inflict upon himself a privation—­he would renounce his cherished enterprise—­he would enable me to accomplish mine—­he would cause me to enjoy for a year the fruits of his savings, and all this gratuitously.  Since he delays the cultivation of his land, since he enables me to realise a lucrative labour, it is quite natural that I should let him partake, in a certain proportion, of the profits which I shall gain by the sacrifice he makes of his own.”

On his side, Mathurin, who was something of a scholar, made this calculation:—­“Since, by virtue of the first clause, the sack of corn will return to me at the end of a year,” he said to himself, “I shall be able to lend it again; it will return to me at the end of the second year; I may lend it again, and so on, to all eternity.  However, I cannot deny that it will have been eaten long ago.  It is singular that I should be perpetually the owner of a sack of corn, although the one I have lent has been consumed for ever.  But this is explained thus:—­It will be consumed in the service of Jerome.  It will put it into the power of Jerome to produce a superior value; and, consequently, Jerome will be able to restore me a sack of corn, or the value of it, without having suffered the slightest injury:  but quite the contrary.  And as regards myself, this value ought to be my property, as long as I do not consume it myself.  If I had used it to clear my land, I should have received it again in the form of a fine harvest.  Instead of that, I lend it, and shall recover it in the form of repayment.