“In the olden time sophists talked to a limited number of men; to-day the periodical press enables them to lead astray a nation,” cried the juge de paix; “and that portion of the press which pleads for right ideas finds no echo.”

The mayor looked at Monsieur Clousier in amazement.  Madame Graslin, glad to find in a simple juge de paix a man whose mind was occupied with serious questions, said to Monsieur Roubaud, her neighbor, “Do you know Monsieur Clousier?”

“Not rightly until to-day, madame.  You are doing miracles,” he answered in a whisper.  “And yet, look at his brow, how noble in shape!  Isn’t it like the classic or traditional brow given by sculptors to Lycurgus and the Greek sages?  The revolution of July has an evidently retrograde tendency,” said the doctor (who might in his student days have made a barricade himself), after carefully considering Grossetete’s calculation.

“These ideas are threefold,” continued Clousier.  “You have talked of law and finance, but how is it with the government itself?  The royal power, weakened by the doctrine of national sovereignty, in virtue of which the election of August 9, 1830, has just been made, will endeavor to counteract that rival principle which gives to the people the right to saddle the nation with a new dynasty every time it does not fully comprehend the ideas of its king.  You will see that we shall then have internal struggles which will arrest for long periods together the progress of France.”

“All these reefs have been wisely evaded by England,” remarked Gerard.  “I have been there; I admire that beehive, which sends its swarms over the universe and civilizes mankind,—­a people among whom discussion is a political comedy, which satisfies the masses and hides the action of power, which then works freely in its upper sphere; a country where elections are not in the hands of a stupid bourgeoisie, as they are in France.  If England were parcelled out into small holdings the nation would no longer exist.  The land-owning class, the lords, guide the social mechanism.  Their merchant-service, under the nose of Europe, takes possession of whole regions of the globe to meet the needs of their commerce and to get rid of their paupers and malcontents.  Instead of fighting capacities, as we do, thwarting them, nullifying them, the English aristocratic class seeks out young talent, rewards it, and is constantly assimilating it.  Everything which concerns the action of the government, in the choice of men and things, is prompt in England, whereas with us all is slow; and yet the English are slow by nature, while we are impatient.  With them money is bold and actively employed; with us it is timid and suspicious.  What Monsieur Grossetete has said of the industrial losses which the hoarding peasantry inflict on France has its proof in a fact I will show to you in two words:  English capital, by its perpetual turning over, has created ten thousand millions of manufacturing and interest-bearing property; whereas French capital, which is far more abundant, has not created one tenth of that amount.”