be the most powerful civilizing agencies of our
time. They alone afford to a man of wealth the opportunity of mitigating
the fate of the poor, with whom they daily bring him in contact.

"The peasant is always more willing to listen to the man who lays down
rules for saving him from bodily ills than to the priest who exhorts him
to save his soul. The first speaker can talk of this earth, the scene
of the peasant's labors, while the priest is bound to talk to him of
heaven, with which, unfortunately, the peasant nowadays concerns himself
very little indeed; I say unfortunately, because the doctrine of a
future life is not only a consolation, but a means by which men may be
governed. Is not religion the one power that sanctions social laws? We
have but lately vindicated the existence of God. In the absence of a
religion, the Government was driven to invent the Terror, in order to
carry its laws into effect; but the terror was the fear of man, and it
has passed away.

"When a peasant is ill, when he is forced to lie on his pallet, and
while he is recovering, he cannot help himself, he is forced to listen
to logical reasoning, which he can understand quite well if it is put
clearly before him. This thought made a doctor of me. My calculations
for the peasants were made along with them. I never gave advice unless
I was quite sure of the results, and in this way compelled them to admit
the wisdom of my views. The people require infallibility. Infallibility
was the making of Napoleon; he would have been a god if he had not
filled the world with the sound of his fall at Waterloo. If Mahomet
founded a permanent religion after conquering the third part of the
globe, it was by dint of concealing his deathbed from the crowd. The
same rules hold good for the great conqueror and for the provincial
mayor, and a nation or a commune is much the same sort of crowd; indeed,
the great multitude of mankind is the same everywhere.

"I have been exceedingly firm with those whom I have helped with money;
if I had not been inflexible on this point, they all would have laughed
at me. Peasants, no less than worldlings, end by despising the man that
they can deceive. He has been cheated? Clearly, then, he must have been
weak; and it is might alone that governs the world. I have never charged
a penny for my professional advice, except to those who were evidently
rich people; but I have not allowed the value of my services to be
overlooked at all,