or six men were killed.  And when knights went to the wars, at least they were not forced to do it; they died for their pleasure.  They were good for nothing else.  Nobody in the time of Saint Louis would have thought of sending to battle a man of learning.  And the laborer was not torn from the soil to be killed.  Nowadays it is a duty for a poor peasant to be a soldier.  He is exiled from his house, the roof of which smokes in the silence of night; from the fat prairies where the oxen graze; from the fields and the paternal woods.  He is taught how to kill men; he is threatened, insulted, put in prison and told that it is an honor; and, if he does not care for that sort of honor, he is fusilladed.  He obeys because he is terrorized, and is of all domestic animals the gentlest and most docile.  We are warlike in France, and we are citizens.  Another reason to be proud, this being a citizen!  For the poor it consists in sustaining and preserving the wealthy in their power and their laziness.  The poor must work for this, in presence of the majestic quality of the law which prohibits the wealthy as well as the poor from sleeping under the bridges, from begging in the streets, and from stealing bread.  That is one of the good effects of the Revolution.  As this Revolution was made by fools and idiots for the benefit of those who acquired national lands, and resulted in nothing but making the fortune of crafty peasants and financiering bourgeois, the Revolution only made stronger, under the pretence of making all men equal, the empire of wealth.  It has betrayed France into the hands of the men of wealth.  They are masters and lords.  The apparent government, composed of poor devils, is in the pay of the financiers.  For one hundred years, in this poisoned country, whoever has loved the poor has been considered a traitor to society.  A man is called dangerous when he says that there are wretched people.  There are laws against indignation and pity, and what I say here could not go into print.”

Choulette became excited and waved his knife, while under the wintry sunlight passed fields of brown earth, trees despoiled by winter, and curtains of poplars beside silvery rivers.

He looked with tenderness at the figure carved on his stick.

“Here you are,” he said, “poor humanity, thin and weeping, stupid with shame and misery, as you were made by your masters—­soldiers and men of wealth.”

The good Madame Marmet, whose nephew was a captain in the artillery, was shocked at the violence with which Choulette attacked the army.  Madame Martin saw in this only an amusing fantasy.  Choulette’s ideas did not frighten her.  She was afraid of nothing.  But she thought they were a little absurd.  She did not think that the past had ever been better than the present.

“I believe, Monsieur Choulette, that men were always as they are to-day, selfish, avaricious, and pitiless.  I believe that laws and manners were always harsh and cruel to the unfortunate.”