city slums, the thing might have passed
unnoticed; but in a country valley, and from a plain and honest
countrywoman, this beastliness of speech surprised the ear.

The _Conductor_, as he is called, _of Roads and Bridges_ was my
principal companion. He was generally intelligent, and could have spoken
more or less falsetto on any of the trite topics; but it was his
specialty to have a generous taste in eating. This was what was most
indigenous in the man; it was here he was an artist; and I found in his
company what I had long suspected, that enthusiasm and special knowledge
are the great social qualities, and what they are about, whether white
sauce or Shakespeare's plays, an altogether secondary question.

I used to accompany the _Conductor_ on his professional rounds, and grew
to believe myself an expert in the business. I thought I could make an
entry in a stone-breaker's time-book, or order manure off the wayside
with any living engineer in France. Gondet was one of the places we
visited together; and Laussonne, where I met the apothecary's father,
was another. There, at Laussonne, George Sand spent a day while she was
gathering materials for the "Marquis de Villemer"; and I have spoken
with an old man, who was then a child running about the inn kitchen, and
who still remembers her with a sort of reverence. It appears that he
spoke French imperfectly; for this reason George Sand chose him for
companion, and whenever he let slip a broad and picturesque phrase in
_patois_, she would make him repeat it again and again till it was
graven in her memory. The word for a frog particularly pleased her
fancy; and it would be curious to know if she afterwards employed it in
her works. The peasants, who knew nothing of letters and had never so
much as heard of local colour, could not explain her chattering with
this backward child; and to them she seemed a very homely lady and far
from beautiful: the most famous man-killer of the age appealed so little
to Velaisian swine-herds!

On my first engineering excursion, which lay up by Crouzials towards
Mount Mezenc and the borders of Ardeche, I began an improving
acquaintance with the foreman road-mender. He was in great glee at
having me with him, passed me off among his subalterns as the
supervising engineer, and insisted on what he called "the gallantry" of
paying for my breakfast in a roadside wine-shop. On the whole, he was a
man of great weather-wisdom, some spirits, and a so