.

.

And yet we all live in peace.

In Europe, we would have probably been in a grand fight by this time, but here we are all friends." He took much pleasure in listening to the music of the laborers--laments from Italian songs to the accompaniment of the accordion, Spanish guitars and Creole choruses, wild voices chanting of love and death.
"This is a regular Noah's ark," exulted the vainglorious patriarch.
"He means the tower of Babel," thought Desnoyers to himself, "but it's all the same thing to the old man." "I believe," he rambled on, "that we live thus because in this part of the world there are no kings and a very small army--and mankind is thinking only of enjoying itself as much as possible, thanks to its work.

But I also believe that we live so peacefully because there is such abundance that everyone gets his share.