en attending a conference about agriculture. They
were all agreed as to the existence of 'an agricultural crisis,' but
beyond that they seemed to be at sea. One councillor was quite sure that
the thing to be done was to get the farmers to use cattle instead of
horses in their work. The cattle cost less, worked as well, and they
could be killed for beef. They were also more valuable as fertilisers.
Upon this another councillor, apparently the only agriculturist of the
company, went into a disquisition on chemical fertilisers and the
scientific applications of them.

'I never believed in these chemicals,' he said, 'till last year. But
last year I was in my fields, talking with my neighbour So-and-so, who
has spent I know not how much on these chemicals. He went away with his
men after a while, and I saw they had been applying their chemicals to a
field sown like mine. An idea occurred to me. I went and brought a
basket. I stepped across into their field and took a certain quantity of
their chemicals. These I applied in a particular part of my field. Do
you know the plants came up there wonderfully--but really quite
wonderfully! There is no doubt there is a good deal in these chemicals!
But one should test them first!'

After dinner we sate out in front of the little inn for a time with our
coffee. There was a good deal of coming and going, a tremendous
clattering about of children in little wooden _sabots_, and much
good-natured 'chaff' between the people of the inn, who came out to
take the air after their day's work, and the passers-by. There seems to
be little in the peasants here of that positive _morgue_, not to say
arrogance, which marks the demeanour of their class in the western parts
of France. There are regions in Brittany where the carriage of the
peasants towards the 'bourgeois' gives reality and zest to the old story
of the _ci-devant_ noble who called a particularly insolent varlet to
order in the days of the first Revolution by saying to him: 'Nay,
friend, you will be good enough to remember that we are living in a
republic, and that I am your equal!'

There was the most perfect civility and amiableness even in the
interchange of not very delicate pleasantries between the people at
Coucy. 'Don't go too near the butcher's shop!' called out one of the
ostlers to a man with whom he had been talking as the latter drove off
in his cart. 'Ah! you won't eat me, if I do,' the other replied; 'it
would cost you to