air of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you?
Do you understand anything about it?"

"Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist,--that is to say, a
chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois, being the
knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies,
it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in
fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the
analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is
all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?"

The landlady did not answer. Homais went on:

"Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled
the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the
composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the
atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters,
the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not.
And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to
direct, criticise the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals,
the diet of the domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must
know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand,
which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are
unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and
re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must
keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be
always on the alert to find out improvements."

The landlady never took her eyes off the "Cafe Francais," and the
chemist went on:

"Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they
would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus, lately I
myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of more than seventy-two
pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with
some New Reflections on this Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural
Society of Rouen, and which even procured me the honor of being received
among its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if
my work had been given to the public--" But the druggist stopped, Madame
Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied.

"Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop
as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her
breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed