"Well, and what did they make you say on your wedding day?"
"Ma foi, monsieur le curé, they made me say, I will."
"Well, my good fellow, that is all the Emperor asks you to say; that is voting."
Whereupon Jacques went and threw his oui in the electoral box.
There is one form of government, however, of which he would dread the return: the government of the curés. He has not forgotten the tithe and the corvée, nor the days when the monks used to come and pay little visits to his wife and his cupboard, to bless his children, and relieve him of his superfluous butter and eggs.
He is no great churchgoer; yet, when he meets his parish priest, he touches his cap, but almost as he would touch it to an equal.
He is beginning to know how to hold a pen, but he rarely uses one except for the purpose of adding up his little accounts. As to letter-writing, he sees no fun in a frivolous pastime that would cost him three sous.
He has been placed by Nature on a fertile soil that yields him all he needs, and if you were to talk to him of emigration, he would stare and ask you what crime he had committed to deserve transportation. There is no more home-abiding creature upon the face of the earth.
You may tell him you are going round the world. He will let you go. He is not jealous.
On the wall of the village schoolroom he has seen a map of the world, but although he is willing to believe that it fairly represents the earth we live on, he would fain have seen the name of his dear village on it. He doubts not that the earth is round, since his curé and his schoolmaster say so; but the only proof he has of it is the sight of the line of horizon that greets his eyes, when he climbs the hill-top.