There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontainebleau; and when the dessert comes in at Barbizon, people look to the door for a figure that is gone.

The third of our companions at Origny was no less a person than the landlady’s husband:  not properly the landlord, since he worked himself in a factory during the day, and came to his own house at evening as a guest:  a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual excitement, with baldish head, sharp features, and swift, shining eyes.  On Saturday, describing some paltry adventure at a duck-hunt, he broke a plate into a score of fragments.  Whenever he made a remark, he would look all round the table with his chin raised, and a spark of green light in either eye, seeking approval.  His wife appeared now and again in the doorway of the room, where she was superintending dinner, with a ‘Henri, you forget yourself,’ or a ‘Henri, you can surely talk without making such a noise.’  Indeed, that was what the honest fellow could not do.  On the most trifling matter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and his voice rolled abroad in changeful thunder.  I never saw such a petard of a man; I think the devil was in him.  He had two favourite expressions:  ‘it is logical,’ or illogical, as the case might be:  and this other, thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man might unfurl a banner, at the beginning of many a long and sonorous story:  ‘I am a proletarian, you see.’  Indeed, we saw it very well.  God forbid that ever I should find him handling a gun in Paris streets!  That will not be a good moment for the general public.

I thought his two phrases very much represented the good and evil of his class, and to some extent of his country.  It is a strong thing to say what one is, and not be ashamed of it; even although it be in doubtful taste to repeat the statement too often in one evening.  I should not admire it in a duke, of course; but as times go, the trait is honourable in a workman.  On the other hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put one’s reliance upon logic; and our own logic particularly, for it is generally wrong.  We never know where we are to end, if once we begin following words or doctors.  There is an upright stock in a man’s own heart, that is trustier than any syllogism; and the eyes, and the sympathies and appetites, know a thing or two that have never yet been stated in controversy.  Reasons are as plentiful as blackberries; and, like fisticuffs, they serve impartially with all sides.  Doctrines do not stand or fall by their proofs, and are only logical in so far as they are cleverly put.  An able controversialist no more than an able general demonstrates the justice of his cause.  But France is all gone wandering after one or two big words; it will take some time before they can be satisfied that they are no more than words, however big; and when once that is done, they will perhaps find logic less diverting.

The conversation opened with details of the day’s shooting.  When all the sportsmen of a village shoot over the village territory pro indiviso, it is plain that many questions of etiquette and priority must arise.