"Yes, I know all about that nonsense! But, long before you get a chance of trying your fine system of agriculture, all our French soil will have disappeared, submerged beneath a deluge of corn from America. Listen now for a moment: this little book that I have been reading again supplies a lot of particulars on the subject which will entirely bear me out. I said so, once before. Yes, indeed, our peasants may take themselves off to bed, for the candle is burnt out."
Then, in the tone of voice in which he was wont to give a lesson to his pupils, he proceeded to speak about the corn supplies of America. There were mighty plains over there, he told them, as large as kingdoms, in the midst of which La Beauce would be quite lost, like a mere clod of earth. The soil, too, was so fertile that, instead of having to manure it, it was necessary to drain off its exuberant richness by a preliminary crop; but, in spite of that, two full crops were harvested every year. There were farms of seventy thousand acres in extent, divided into sections, which were again cut up into sub-sections, each section being under the supervision of a steward, and each sub-section under the direction of a foreman. They were provided with houses for the men, stables for the cattle, sheds for the tools, and other buildings where all the cooking was carried on. There were whole battalions of farm-servants, who were hired at spring-time, and organised just like campaigning armies—boarded, lodged, and physicked, and then paid off in the autumn. The furrows ploughed and sown there were miles in length, and there were spreading seas of ripening corn, the limits of which extended far out of sight. Men were merely employed there as supervisors, all the actual work being done by machinery. There were double-ploughs, furnished with deep-cutting discs; sowing-machines, weeding-machines, reaping-machines, and locomotive threshing-machines, that also stacked the straw. There were ploughmen who were skilful engineers, and squads of workmen who followed every machine on horseback, always ready to dismount and tighten a screw, or change a bolt, or hammer a bar. The soil was, in fact, like a sort of bank, managed by financiers. It was treated systematically, and cropped smooth and close to the very surface, yielding to impersonal and mechanical science ten times as much as it offered to men's loving arms.
"And can you hope to carry on the struggle," he continued, "with your twopenny-halfpenny tools?—you who are so ignorant, so entirely without ambition, and who are quite contented to go grubbing on in the same old way as your forefathers? Ah! you are already sunk up to your bellies in the corn from over the sea, and it is still rising about you, for the ships are ever bringing larger quantities of it over. Wait a little longer and you will find it up to your shoulders; then it will reach your mouths, and then the flood will close over your heads! A flood! aye, a torrent—a wild deluge that will sweep you all away!"
The peasants opened their eyes widely, quite panic-stricken by the thought of this inundation of foreign corn. They were already suffering distress; were they really going to be altogether drowned and swept away, as the schoolmaster said? They took his metaphors very literally. Would Rognes, their fields, and the whole of La Beauce be swallowed up?
"No, never!" cried Delhomme, choking with emotion. "The Government will protect us."
"A pretty protector, indeed, the Government will be!" Lequeu resumed, contemptuously. "It will need all its time to protect itself! You behaved most ridiculously in electing Monsieur Rochefontaine. The master of La Borderie, at any rate, behaved consistently in supporting Monsieur de Chédeville. However, after all, whether you have the one or the other, it is only putting the same plaster on a wooden leg. No Chamber would ever dare to impose a duty high enough. Protection cannot save you; you are doomed beyond all redemption!"
There was now a noisy outbreak, and all the peasants began to speak at once. Couldn't something be done to stop the disastrous influx of this foreign corn? They would sink the ships in the docks, and shoot the fellows who brought the corn over! Their voices quivered with emotion, and they almost seemed inclined to burst into tears, and stretch out their hands and pray that they might be saved from all this abundance—from this cheap bread which threatened to ruin the country. The schoolmaster grinned with malicious satisfaction, and told them that nobody had ever heard of such ideas as now possessed them. Their previous fears had always been of famine—that they would not have corn enough; and surely it must now be all u.p. with them since they felt afraid of having too much! He was growing quite intoxicated with his own eloquence, and he shouted above the furious cries of protest:
"You are a perishing and worn-out race. Your imbecile love of the soil has eaten you up. Yes, you are each the slave of a patch of ground, which has so narrowed your minds that, for the sake of it, you would murder your fellows! For centuries past you have been wedded to the soil, and it has always betrayed you! Look at America! There the agriculturist is master of the soil. He isn't bound to it by any family ties, any sentimental considerations; as soon as one plot is exhausted, he goes further on and takes another. If he hears that more fertile plains have been discovered some three hundred leagues away, he moves his tent and goes off there. Thanks to his machines, he has only to will and do. He is free, and he's growing rich; while you are slaves, and are dying of starvation!"
Buteau's face had grown pale, for Lequeu had looked at him when speaking of murder. He tried to appear quite unconcerned, however.
"Well, we are as we are," he said. "What is the good of our troubling ourselves, since you yourself say that it will be all to no purpose?"