earning. And the laborer was not torn from the soil to
be killed. Nowadays it is a duty for a poor peasant to be a soldier. He
is exiled from his house, the roof of which smokes in the silence of
night; from the fat prairies where the oxen graze; from the fields and
the paternal woods. He is taught how to kill men; he is threatened,
insulted, put in prison and told that it is an honor; and, if he does not
care for that sort of honor, he is fusilladed. He obeys because he is
terrorized, and is of all domestic animals the gentlest and most docile.
We are warlike in France, and we are citizens. Another reason to be
proud, this being a citizen! For the poor it consists in sustaining and
preserving the wealthy in their power and their laziness. The poor must
work for this, in presence of the majestic quality of the law which
prohibits the wealthy as well as the poor from sleeping under the
bridges, from begging in the streets, and from stealing bread. That is
one of the good effects of the Revolution. As this Revolution was made by
fools and idiots for the benefit of those who acquired national lands,
and resulted in nothing but making the fortune of crafty peasants and
financiering bourgeois, the Revolution only made stronger, under the
pretence of making all men equal, the empire of wealth. It has betrayed
France into the hands of the men of wealth. They are masters and lords.
The apparent government, composed of poor devils, is in the pay of the
financiers. For one hundred years, in this poisoned country, whoever has
loved the poor has been considered a traitor to society. A man is called
dangerous when he says that there are wretched people. There are laws
against indignation and pity, and what I say here could not go into
print."

Choulette became excited and waved his knife, while under the wintry
sunlight passed fields of brown earth, trees despoiled by winter, and
curtains of poplars beside silvery rivers.

He looked with tenderness at the figure carved on his stick.

"Here you are," he said, "poor humanity, thin and weeping, stupid with
shame and misery, as you were made by your masters--soldiers and men of
wealth."

The good Madame Marmet, whose nephew was a captain in the artillery, was
shocked at the violence with which Choulette attacked the army. Madame
Martin saw in this only an amusing fantasy. Choulette's ideas did not
frighten her. She was afraid of nothing. But she thought they were a
little absurd. Sh