The more money the rich man offers, the more the vague uneasiness of the peasant increases.
Legal dispossession alone is able to bring the landed property of the peasant into the market.

Many persons have noticed this fact without being able to find a reason for it." "This is the reason," said the abbe, rightly believing that a pause with Blondet was equivalent to a question: "twelve centuries have done nothing for a caste whom the historic spectacle of civilization has never yet diverted from its one predominating thought,--a caste which still wears proudly the broad-brimmed hat of its masters, ever since an abandoned fashion placed it upon their heads.

That all-pervading thought, the roots of which are in the bowels of the people, and which attached them so vehemently to Napoleon (who was personally less to them than he thought he was) and which explains the miracle of his return in 1815,--that desire for land is the sole motive power of the peasant's being.

In the eyes of the masses Napoleon, ever one with them through his million of soldiers, is still the king born of the Revolution; the man who gave them possession of the soil and sold to them the national domains.

His anointing was saturated with that idea." "An idea to which 1814 dealt a blow, an idea which monarchy should hold sacred," said Blondet, quickly; "for the people may some day find on the steps of the throne a prince whose father bequeathed to him the head of Louis XVI.