les; he proves to him that if he would substitute for that diet
a certain portion of meat, he would be better fed, at less cost; that
he could work more, and would not use up his capital of health and
strength so quickly. The Berrichon sees the correctness of the
calculation, but he answers, "Think of the gossip, monsieur." "Gossip,
what do you mean?" "Well, yes, what would people say of me?" "He would
be the talk of the neighborhood," said the owner of the property on
which this scene took place; "they would think him as rich as a
tradesman. He is afraid of public opinion, afraid of being pointed at,
afraid of seeming ill or feeble. That's how we all are in this
region." Many of the bourgeoisie utter this phrase with feelings of
inward pride.

While ignorance and custom are invincible in the country regions,
where the peasants are left very much to themselves, the town of
Issoudun itself has reached a state of complete social stagnation.
Obliged to meet the decadence of fortunes by the practice of sordid
economy, each family lives to itself. Moreover, society is permanently
deprived of that distinction of classes which gives character to
manners and customs. There is no opposition of social forces, such as
that to which the cities of the Italian States in the Middle Ages owed
their vitality. There are no longer any nobles in Issoudun. The
Cottereaux, the Routiers, the Jacquerie, the religious wars and the
Revolution did away with the nobility. The town is proud of that
triumph. Issoudun has repeatedly refused to receive a garrison, always
on the plea of cheap provisions. She has thus lost a means of
intercourse with the age, and she has also lost the profits arising
from the presence of troops. Before 1756, Issoudun was one of the most
delightful of all the garrison towns. A judicial drama, which occupied
for a time the attention of France, the feud of a lieutenant-general
of the department with the Marquis de Chapt, whose son, an officer of
dragoons, was put to death,--justly perhaps, yet traitorously, for
some affair of gallantry,--deprived the town from that time forth of a
garrison. The sojourn of the forty-fourth demi-brigade, imposed upon
it during the civil war, was not of a nature to reconcile the
inhabitants to the race of warriors.

Bourges, whose population is yearly decreasing, is a victim of the
same social malady. Vitality is leaving these communities.
Undoubtedly, the government is to blame. The duty o