The four councillors-general were all Republicans. One of them, a country banker, as I learned, was a trifle sarcastic about the prospects of the party. 'They are too soft,' he said, 'at Paris. They lack wrist. They do not hit hard enough. What we want is a man; where are we to find him?' Another, a tall grey-bearded man, an attorney, agreed with the banker as to the 'softness' of the authorities. 'I am a Republican of yesterday,' he said. 'I remember, under the Empire, how, when I spoke at Chauny, I spoke with a gendarme at the table behind me, and a couple of spies in the hall. That is what we should have now in these meetings where they abuse the Republic.' I observed that while this councillor, by the way, always spoke of 'the Republic,' the banker as invariably spoke of 'the Republican party.' They both agreed, however, and their companions agreed with them, that the real want was the 'want of a man.'

'The President is doing well though,' said the grey-bearded 'Republican of yesterday.' 'He is beginning to stand out against the horizon, is he not?' The others were not so sure of this, and then there arose a most lively and singularly outspoken exchange of views as to the different leaders of the Republican party. It would be hardly fair for me to cite these; but one remark made by the banker, in regard to a very conspicuous political personage, amused me. 'Yes,' he said in reply to one of his companions: 'yes; —— is skilful—very skilful—but he has no foresight. Would you trust him with your pocket-book? No!' 'Oh certainly not!'

It seemed they had been attending a conference about agriculture. They were all agreed as to the existence of 'an agricultural crisis,' but beyond that they seemed to be at sea. One councillor was quite sure that the thing to be done was to get the farmers to use cattle instead of horses in their work. The cattle cost less, worked as well, and they could be killed for beef. They were also more valuable as fertilisers. Upon this another councillor, apparently the only agriculturist of the company, went into a disquisition on chemical fertilisers and the scientific applications of them.

'I never believed in these chemicals,' he said, 'till last year. But last year I was in my fields, talking with my neighbour So-and-so, who has spent I know not how much on these chemicals. He went away with his men after a while, and I saw they had been applying their chemicals to a field sown like mine. An idea occurred to me. I went and brought a basket. I stepped across into their field and took a certain quantity of their chemicals. These I applied in a particular part of my field. Do you know the plants came up there wonderfully—but really quite wonderfully! There is no doubt there is a good deal in these chemicals! But one should test them first!'

After dinner we sate out in front of the little inn for a time with our coffee. There was a good deal of coming and going, a tremendous clattering about of children in little wooden sabots, and much good-natured 'chaff' between the people of the inn, who came out to take the air after their day's work, and the passers-by. There seems to be little in the peasants here of that positive morgue, not to say arrogance, which marks the demeanour of their class in the western parts of France. There are regions in Brittany where the carriage of the peasants towards the 'bourgeois' gives reality and zest to the old story of the ci-devant noble who called a particularly insolent varlet to order in the days of the first Revolution by saying to him: 'Nay, friend, you will be good enough to remember that we are living in a republic, and that I am your equal!'

There was the most perfect civility and amiableness even in the interchange of not very delicate pleasantries between the people at Coucy. 'Don't go too near the butcher's shop!' called out one of the ostlers to a man with whom he had been talking as the latter drove off in his cart. 'Ah! you won't eat me, if I do,' the other replied; 'it would cost you too much!' An old farmer who sate sipping his petit verre near me, explained to me that the man was a resident of Barisis, a little village not very far off, the dwellers in which from time immemorial have been known as 'the pigs of Barisis.' 'Try and pick up a husband on the way,' another of the stable lads called out after a pretty girl who paused with a companion, as she went by the place, to chat with him—'try and pick up a husband on the way and we'll keep the wedding feast here!' 'Ah bah!' the damsel rejoined in a merry voice, 'more marryers come your way than ours. Tie up the first one that comes and keep him for me!' This quickness to catch and return the ball certainly shows a greater natural or acquired alertness of mind among these Picard peasants than is commonly found in people of the same condition in rural England.

The country all the way from Coucy to Laon is one continuous garden, and Laon itself is pre-eminently a city set on a hill. The Château de Coucy stands upon its pinnacle of rock, like a knight in armour, with folded arms, looking loftily down upon the world, conscious of his strength, and calmly awaiting attack. The fortress-city of Laon, a fortress from the earliest Roman days, looks out from the promontory on which it stands, over the wide expanse of plain beyond and around it, like an advanced sentinel, watchful and alert.

You go up to it by long flights of steps, as in the case of so many high-perched Italian towns, and the fine winding carriage-way which has been constructed around the hill, commands, from beneath the beautiful trees by which it is shaded, a series of the finest imaginable views. It has suffered much, of course, from war, and not a little from the revolutionists. But its magnificent cathedral and the ancient palace of the bishop-dukes, now occupied by the courts of justice, have fared better than many other monuments. For some time past, however, the cathedral has been undergoing repairs, which is as much as to say that the interior is practically hidden from the eye by a maze of scaffolds and hoardings and ladders. Mr. Ruskin somewhere complains, not wholly without reason, that 'the French are always doing something to their cathedrals,' and the complaint is in order now both as to Laon and as to Nantes. No one can tell when the fine recumbent statue of Raoul de Coucy, who fell at Mansourah by the side of St.-Louis, will again be visible at Laon, or the matchless tomb of the Duchesse Anne at Nantes.

Here, as in the region around Chauny and Coucy, I was struck with the extreme good-nature and simplicity of the people. Through the narrow, old-fashioned streets went the town-crier with his bell, calling 'Attention! attention! attention!' announcing an auction sale of furniture after the old custom which existed in some old American towns quite down to the middle of the present century.

The people were at their trades in the street, as in the Italian towns, shoemakers hammering at their lasts, ironworkers banging and thumping away. When I had found the house of a gentleman whom I wished to see, in the beautiful old cathedral close, and had rung in vain a dozen times at the bell, a courteous passer-by paused, and asked me if I wished to find M. ——. 'Eh!' he said, 'the house is shut up because he is in the country for the day. I think he will be here to-morrow; but if you will come with me I will show you a little inn not far from here where I know you will find his coachman, who can tell you exactly when he will return.'