"Only come a good year, not too dry, not too wet, and we shall have money enough!"
The farmer had drawn himself up, as if under a personal insult, and now awaited Driot's answer.
He, carried away by passion, rose. Everyone looked at him, even the farm-servant, who, with chin sunk in his horny hand, was trying to understand the situation. And there was something in the fluency of words, ease of gesture that made all vaguely feel that André was no longer like one of themselves.
"Yes," said the youth, proud of an audience, "there might still be some work to be done here, in the old country; but we are taught nothing of such things in our schools; that would be too practical. Then taxes are too heavy, and rents too high; and all the time that we are leading a miserable existence, they out yonder are having magnificent harvests. That I hear every day. Our vineyards are ruined, and they have wine. Wheat grows without their having to dress the land, and they export it to us in shiploads as full as, from what you say, the granaries of the old Château used to be——"
"Cock and bull stories! You have read them in books."
"Some of them; but I have seen ships in port, and sacks of wheat being unloaded like the water of a dyke overflowing its banks. If you were to read the papers, you would know that everything now comes to us from abroad far cheaper than we can produce it ourselves: corn, oats, horses, oxen; and that we have competing with us Americans, Australians, and soon we shall have Japanese, Chinese——" he was intoxicated with words; he was but the echo of the few pamphlets he had read, or of what he had heard from others. La Fromentière heard him with stupor. China, Japan, America, the names circled round the room like some unknown variety of bird, brought by the tempest from far-off regions. The farmhouse walls had heard many uncouth peasant sounds, but never had they resounded under the shock of these foreign words.
Astonishment was marked upon the faces that, in the light of the lamp, were turned upon Driot, who continued:
"I have learnt things, I can assure you! I learn more every day. And, look you, when one comes home as I have done to-night, from rooting up a vineyard, it makes one savage to think that there are parts of America, and I could give you the names, where one can settle without opening one's purse——"
"You be off!" quoth the ploughman.
"Yes! Government gives the agriculturist his passage free; keeps him when he first lands; and gives him a ranch of seventy-four acres of land."