diseases, of which the cows often die.  They use cows in the neighborhood of Paris as they do horses in the street.  Crops more profitable than hay —­vegetables, fruit, apple orchards, vineyards—­are taking the place of meadow-lands.  In a few years we shall see milk sent to Paris by the mail-coaches as they now send fish.  What is going on around Paris is also going on round all the large cities of France; the land will thus be used up before many years are gone.  Chaptel states that in 1800 there were barely two million acres of vineyard in France; a careful estimate would give ten million to-day.  Divided ad infinitum by our present system of inheritance, Normandy will lose half her production of horses and cattle; but she will have a monopoly of milk in Paris, for her climate, happily, forbids grape culture.  We shall soon see a curious phenomenon in the progressive rise in the cost of meat.  In twenty years from now, in 1850, Paris, which paid seven to eleven sous for a pound of beef in 1814, will be paying twenty—­unless there comes a man of genius who can carry out the plan of Charles X.”

“You have laid your finger on the mortal wound of France,” said the juge de paix.  “The root of our evils lies in the section relating to inheritance in the Civil Code, in which the equal division of property among heirs is ordained.  That’s the pestle that pounds territory into crumbs, individualizes fortunes, and takes from them their needful stability; decomposing ever and never recomposing,—­a state of things which must end in the ruin of France.  The French Revolution emitted a destructive virus to which the July days have given fresh activity.  This vitiating element is the accession of the peasantry to the ownership of land.  In the section ‘On Inheritance’ is the principle of the evil, the peasant is the means through which it works.  No sooner does that class get a parcel of land into its maw than it begins to subdivide it, till there are scarcely three furrows left in each lot.  And even then the peasant does not stop!  He divides the three furrows across their length, as Monsieur Grossetete has just shown us at Argenteuil.  The unreasonable price which the peasant attaches to the smallest scrap of his land makes it impossible to repurchase and restore a fine estate.  Monsieur,” he went on, indicating Grossetete, “has just mentioned the diminution in the raising of horses and cattle; well, the Code has much to do with that.  The peasant-proprietor owns cows; he looks to them for his means of living; he sells the calves, he sells his butter; he never dreams of raising cattle, still less of raising horses; but as he cannot raise enough fodder to support his cows through a dry season, he sends them to market when he can feed them no longer.  If by some fatal chance the hay were to fail for two years running, you would see a startling change the third year in the price of beef, but especially in that of veal.”

“That may put a stop to ‘patriotic banquets,’” said the doctor, laughing.