Let us for awhile follow the author of _The People_, as he traces bondage and hatred throughout the social scheme of France, and gather from him, as well as we may, the remedies he has for their destruction; so shall we do him greater justice, and obtain, if they be within grasp, the intention and the object of his undertaking.
"If we would know," says M. Michelet, "the inmost thought, the passion of the French _Peasant_, it is very easy. Walk any Sunday into the country, and follow him. Look! he is yonder before us! It is two o'clock; his wife is at vespers, and he is in his Sunday's clothes. I warrant you he is going to see his mistress!" His mistress! Yes; but tropically. The peasant's mistress is his _Land_; he loves it with intensest delight, with procreative love. Happy for France that it is so; for let it once cease, and the land is barren from that instant. She brings forth because she is loved. "_La terre le veut ainsi, pour produire; autrement, elle ne donnerait rien, cette pauvre terre de France, sans bestiaux presque et sans engrais._" By _Love_, the reader will understand needful care and culture, but he will err in the interpretation. It is something far more poetical and French. The peasant having arrived face to face with his mistress, "folds his arms, stops, looks serious and thoughtful; he looks a long, long time, and seems to forget himself; at last, if he fancies himself overlooked, if he perceives any body passing, he moves slowly away; after a few steps, he stops, turns round, and casts upon his land one last profound and melancholy look: but to the keen-sighted, that look is full of passion, full of heart, full of devotion. If that be not love, (!) by what token shall we know it in this world? It is love--do not laugh." It were indeed very easy to laugh, but, thus intreated, we forbear, and proceed. To love is to covet possession. To have a bit of land, means "you shall not be a mercenary, to be hired to-day and turned off to-morrow. You shall not be a serf for your daily bread. You shall be free!" To acquire that land, the peasant will consent to any thing, even to lose sight of it. To obtain it he will sell his life, and go to meet death in Africa. The peasant is very aspiring; he has been a soldier; he believes in impossibilities. The acquisition of land is for him a combat; "he goes to it as he would to the charge, and will not retreat. It is his battle of Austerlitz; he will win it; it will be a desperate struggle, he knows, but he has seen plenty of these under his old commander;" and accordingly this brave and warlike peasant borrows money of a usurer at seven, eight, or ten per cent, to purchase a piece of earth that shall bring him in two. "Heroic man--are you surprised, if, meeting him on that land which devours him, you find him so gloomy?" Certainly not. "If you meet him," says M. Michelet--heroic and sublime as he is--"do not ask him your road; if he answers, he may perhaps induce you to turn your back on the place you are going to." It is the way with atrabilious heroes. What is to be done? "We must take serious measures for defending the nobility;" that is to say--the peasantry who are in the hands of the usurers. Alter the laws. This "vast and profound," but very much involved "legion of peasant-soldier proprietors," are the People: the people are France. France is a principle, "a great political principle. It must be defended at any cost. As a principle, she must live. _Live for the salvation of the world (!!)_ In the midst of his difficulties, the peasant learns to envy the town workman. He sees him on Sunday walking about like a gentleman, and thinks he is as free as a bird; he believes that a man who carries his trade with him, not caring a straw for the seasons, is a lord of the creation: he remembers his own liabilities to the usurer--and, lo! we have arrived at bondage and hatred, No. 1.