ade
perilous during the day and life made intolerable at night by such a
clamour of chorus singers and such a clatter of fireworks as I had not
supposed it possible could be got up beyond the domain of our own
'glorious and immortal' American Fourth of July. Several accidents were
caused by 'serpents' and other fireworks, and when I asked a staid and
sober citizen of this old Protestant capital why the law permitted such
performances, he quietly answered: 'The law does not permit them. The
authorities have formally forbidden them, but the authorities are
elective, and they are more anxious to keep their places than to keep
the peace.' To my question whether the extreme Radicals were very strong
in Nimes, he replied that nearly a fourth of the Republicans of Nimes
are avowed Socialists, mostly of the Anti-Boulangist Anti-Possibilist
type. One of their candidates for a legislative seat announced his
intention, if elected, to give some person, to be designated by his
constituents, an order for one half of his legislative salary, to be
drawn regularly, and applied 'by his committee to political purposes.'
His political programme included the formal abolition of the Presidency,
annual legislative elections, the nationalisation of the soil of France,
the abolition of the regular army, the socialisation of all the means of
production, gratuitous and obligatory education on the same lines for
all the children of France, and through all the degrees of education,
and the suppression of the right to bequeath or to inherit property of
any kind,' On the latter point a rather intelligent Socialist with whom
I made acquaintance while I was visiting the fine Roman Amphitheatre at
Nimes, and whom I took to be a skilled mechanic, was very explicit. He
thought property a 'privilege' and therefore inconsistent with equality.
He spoke in an oracular fashion, and he probably belonged to the class
known among French workmen, not as '_sublimes_,' but as _'les fils de
Dieu_.' 'Of what use,' he said, 'is it to abolish hereditary titles if
you allow a man of one generation to give his son in the next generation
the more serious advantage over his fellow of a property which he has
done nothing and could do nothing to create?' I asked him if he agreed
with St.-Just that 'opulence is an infamy.' He replied very seriously:
'Yes, I think if St.-Just said that he said the truth. Certainly I do
not say that every rich man is infamous. That is another matt