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VIGNETTES OF LANGUEDOC.

BY JAN GORDON (AND CORA J. GORDON).

XI. THE PEASANT PROPRIETOR.

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THE type we conventionally proprietorship as the sole depict for the Frenchman- method of preserving national dark, small, excitable, exagger- prosperity. We were to make ated, over dressy, and gesticu- England a land "fit for heroes lating is the very type at by giving retired soldiers plots which the larger part of the of arable land, and by pushing dwellers in France laugh. He them out into the dreariness is the Toulousain or the Mar- of the country. The delights seillais; he may have come of tilling for oneself were preto England in considerable num- sumed to overbalance all the bers connected with the wine other more convivial urban trade, and so have assumed a enjoyments. But to inquire national type. Here in the more closely into how the recent Rouergue the peasants are easy- developments of French peasant mannered, merging towards the proprietorship work, let us look stolidity of the Auvergne, which a little more closely at N lies east of us. One is going to One is going to Here we have a village of be easily tempted to generalisa- peasant proprietors; within the tion, and one is tempted for a memory of living persons it has definite reason. When all is lost at least one-third of its said and done, the future of inhabitants. civilisation rests on the shoulders of the peasant. He is your final chairman who has the casting vote. The Russian Utopia, all our funny little Utopias, break on the back of the landworker. Commerce, industry, &c., are only the bees which suck the honey from the flowers rooted in the soil; if the plants refuse to bear flowers, the bees die. So that "back to the land" is a slogan full of fine purpose, though as impractical as any other idealism.

It has been the habit of a certain set of Utopists to hold up the French system of peasant

Under the peasant system the peasant proprietorship gives an exaggerated amount of work for little result. Let us take as an example the coopertobacconist, father-in-law to Monsieur Lemoule, ex-American soldier. The cooper owns his house in the village, where he lodges with his mother, his daughter, and her husband. The daughter makes hats, lingerie, and sells a few tapes and ribbons; the mother looks after the tobacco-shop; the cooper, with the inadequate help of Lemoule, who is a war relic, tends his fields and pur

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house. From all these outlying unguarded fields the crops must be carted into the homestead, which cannot afford the elbowroom of a farm. The livestock go into the basement with the wine vats -the basse cour,— from which the animal effluvia of pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, and oxen filters up through every cranny, till, as we have already said, the inhabitants are steeped in the odour of their cattle. The produce goes into the loft-hay, corn, brushwood, cabbages, potatoes, maize, &c.,-where it remains a danger in case of fire, and no small breeder of fleas.

sues his trade. The fields themselves are scattered: a mile to the east, on the top of a hill, is a small vineyard; a mile and a half to the south is another; a mile and a half to the eastnorth-east is a hayfield; a mile and a half to the northeast is a field under corn; a half a mile farther on in the same direction is a field of cabbages; along the railwayline to the west some three miles away, in a deep valley very difficult to get at, is a patch of brushwood for winter fires, coal being dear in N- ; and about a mile away on the point of a hill, separated from N by a deep valley and the river, so that the road makes nearly four miles of loops to travel there, is a wood of chestnut-trees, from which he gathers chestnuts and cuts his material for barrel staves. The haphazard chances of land division by marriage or inheritance have brought all these detached pieces of land into his possession. To predict a little further, he may be expected to leave these intact to his daughter. To westwards of N, deep in the valley, Lemoule has a childless uncle with other scattered property, so that Lemoule may inherit yet another patch or two to add to his sons' dispersed occupation. It must be clear that farming under these conditions can be productive neither of much enthusiasm nor of profit. A natural result of this scattering of property is that the village home becomes the farm

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Here the intelligent Utopian begins to protest-"Yes, but why don't. १ But as soon as one has recourse to "Why don't?" in dealing with humanity, one is lost. There are a million obvious 'why don'ts? which nobody has ever yet solved. Utopia is only just round the the corner, and why don't?" is the signpost. No one ever turns that way. The peasants don't concentrate their farms, first, because they are peasants, for exactly the same pig-headed prejudices which bring them squabbling into the Court of the Juge de Paix on Tuesdays. Besides, suppose a peasant has land which gives him a bare subsistence, how is he to afford

even if he wanted to-the arbitration fees which would attend the most simple piece of land exchange? Moreover, corn land, hay land, chestnut land, brushwood, and vineyard

do not all gather contiguously, poor will fill
convenient in these hills.
basket."

No! The small proprietor, complicated by family division and succession, does not seem a satisfactory solution to all agrarian difficulties. The result is - depopulation. Inevitably the old abuse of landlord and tenant will spring up once more, and the vicious circle is begun again.

But a curious result of this peasant proprietorship is very annoying to the would-be visitor-I do not mean to a restaurant visitor such as ourselves, but to one who would take rooms and begin housekeeping at home. In N there is a butcher (who sells rarely anything but veal), a baker, and many grocers, but not one root of vegetable, not one head of cabbage or salad, can the intruder purchase. Each peasant proprietor plants only enough for his own family; if he sells, he will be forced to buy later on for his own supply. This year was exceptionally dry-a drought, to be precise. N- -starved for vegetables, but the only green stuff which reached the village was that brought by a marketgardener and his wife, who came speculatively once a week on a Sunday from a distance of sixteen kilometres.

his vegetable

This year the hay was spread, and dried to the rich man's whole satisfaction.

Indubitably the only ablebodied man who stays here, buried in the country without a private income or a Government job, is the man who cannot get away. the dwellers in N their lot.

One and all bemoaned

"Eh, it's all very well for you coming here in the summer," they protested, "but try the winter. Then you'll see.'

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The consequence is that N- -, peasant-owned though it is, will be more and more setting its face to the town. The eldest son must remain to till the soil; the others can develop. The French peasant differs from his compeers in some other lands in that he has no prejudice against booklearning. He may say faineant, but he is not averse to his children mounting in the social scale; and mount they do in an extraordinary fashion. Let us take our little place, the triangle A. B. C. before the Hôtel Sestrol. Here are the shops of the baker and of the epicier-cobbler (not St Mouxa, we remind you). The epiciercobbler is a small old man, bowed with rheumatism. He

A proverb in patois is apt on pursues a diversity of trades, this matter

"Quan lou rixe biro la gabello,

Lou paoure emplino l'escudelo."

"When the rich must turn his hay" (on account of rain after the hay is cut), "the

including the selling of sweets, which are liable to be tinged with bits of cobbler's wax as he scrapes them from their bottle with uncleansed fingers. His wife is tiny, and has the face of a mask flattened by

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packing. The son of this peasant pair is an assistant in a large Paris shop; his wife is an elegant, good humoured, young Parisienne, though of N descent, who startles the village with the modernity of her overalls when she comes to pay the annual ten days' visit to her husband's parents. Here we may note that the clannism of the villager is such that often a man living in t Paris will chose his wife from some family of other Parisianminised compatriots, as in this instance. The husband is a

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the city; his active mind, his daring, his very build is extraordinary when contrasted-as it is sharply here-with the awkward and bashful clumsiness of his of his village contemporaries. They strive to imitate him, and it is as if a carthorse would emulate a racer. Albert will become a professional man, a soldier, a doctor, a lawyer, probably. When the old people die, the son will let both house and fields. He may sell them, but he will not return to N- Back to the country he may probably go in the end, but it will be to buy a shoddy villa in some banlieue of Paris, where he will drag out his declining years in the company of similar fugitives, finding sufficient country romance in a few ranks of cabbages and an arbour of clambering roses.

XII. THE GARDE CHAMPÊTRE.

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district, and the muzzling order was issued. The office of the garde champêtre was to see the order carried out. The muzzles were of a most curious variety. Kissme, the dog of the Hôtel Sestrol, soon divested itself of the hindering piece of leather about its face, and went from thence on with the muzzle sticking out behind its ear, until the dog, tired of the nuisance, chewed off the projecting parts; Cora, the puppy from opposite, was put into a muzzle large enough for mastiff, so that it could get its whole face through one of the

openings; Oursa, the tobacco- haps cynical in a man of his nist-cooper's black dog, had a achievements. We had supped strap wound round its mouth, out of doors at L'Escaret, the so that either the poor dog farm which Sestrol had bought. could not open its mouth at It was dusk, and, supper over, all, and was tortured with we were all reclining on the thirst during the heat, or- grass-Monsieur and Madame when the strap had worked Sestrol, Raymond, Elise their far enough down-could bite girl lodger, the village semp as easily as before the order stress, Raymond's uncle from was propagated. In nine cases Mazarolles, and the garde chamout of ten the muzzles were pêtre-he had left his wife at quite useless, and in five cases home. It was the feast-day out of ten the dog divested its of the Railway Station. They jaws of the muzzle, which it were going to illuminate the carried dangling on the neck. castle with red flares, and from As often as not the dog of the this old farm in the valley was garde champêtre itself went un- an admirable point of view. muzzled. Not effectiveness To enliven the tedium of our seemed to be demanded, but waiting, the garde champêtre merely some evidence of good- was enticed to sing an old song will, a general acquiescence. in patois :

Wedded to this robust useful citizen citizen was a withered, bent, quarrelsome, filthy, old hag, who could well have been posed as a witch out of Macbeth. She appeared to be a half idiot, daughter of a decrepit, senile, tottering crone, whose many greeds have dwindled into one lingering desire for coffee. But the garde champêtre is rather proud of his marriage. He married well. He, a landless portionless tradesman, has wedded an heiress. She owns two houses, a garden, vineyards, corn lands, and brushwood. Rashly he had said, "She's dirty, yes, but I'll clean her up after marriage." He has not succeeded in his boast.

And it was the garde champêtre who sang us the song of

Lo Biello," which was per

"In Paris lived a woman who was least eighty years old;

(Refrain) Trin, tran labourieuse;

trin, tran labourieusement. On Sunday, at the church, she sat ber

self down by a fine young man. 'Oh, fine young man, if you'll marry I don't marry an old woman without me, I'll make you a rich merchant.' knowing if she has any teeth.' The old woman began to laugh. She had two front teeth, and the One went rigorango, and the other

barabin baraman. 'I don't marry an old woman without

knowing if she has any money.' The old woman went to the cellar, and brought up a great full sack of silver pieces.

And on Sunday was the wedding, and

on Monday the funeral. 'With the money of that old woman, I'll marry a girl who is fifteen years old."

Not perhaps the best of taste on the part of the garde champêtre, you will say, to sing

that song.

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