a cap and bells on a man’s head for the rest of his life.  As he ended his summing-up of all the facts of an indictment, he looked at the accused and said:  “My poor Pierre! the thing is as plain as day; your head will be cut off.  Let this be a lesson to you.”  The commissary of police, holding office since the Restoration, had relations throughout the arrondissement.  Moreover, not only was the influence of religion null, but the curate himself was held in no esteem.

It was this bourgeoisie, radical, ignorant, and loving to annoy others, which now related tales, more or less comic, about the relations of Jean-Jacques Rouget with his servant-woman.  The children of these people went none the less to Sunday-school, and were as scrupulously prepared for their communion:  the schools were kept up all the same; mass was said; the taxes were paid (the sole thing that Paris extracts of the provinces), and the mayor passed resolutions.  But all these acts of social existence were done as mere routine, and thus the laxity of the local government suited admirably with the moral and intellectual condition of the governed.  The events of the following history will show the effects of this state of things, which is not as unusual in the provinces as might be supposed.  Many towns in France, more particularly in the South, are like Issoudun.  The condition to which the ascendency of the bourgeoisie has reduced that local capital is one which will spread over all France, and even to Paris, if the bourgeois continues to rule the exterior and interior policy of our country.

Now, one word of topography.  Issoudun stretches north and south, along a hillside which rounds towards the highroad to Chateauroux.  At the foot of the hill, a canal, now called the “Riviere forcee” whose waters are taken from the Theols, was constructed in former times, when the town was flourishing, for the use of manufactories or to flood the moats of the rampart.  The “Riviere forcee” forms an artificial arm of a natural river, the Tournemine, which unites with several other streams beyond the suburb of Rome.  These little threads of running water and the two rivers irrigate a tract of wide-spreading meadow-land, enclosed on all sides by little yellowish or white terraces dotted with black speckles; for such is the aspect of the vineyards of Issoudun during seven months of the year.  The vine-growers cut the plants down yearly, leaving only an ugly stump, without support, sheltered by a barrel.  The traveller arriving from Vierzon, Vatan, or Chateauroux, his eyes weary with monotonous plains, is agreeably surprised by the meadows of Issoudun,—­the oasis of this part of Berry, which supplies the inhabitants with vegetables throughout a region of thirty miles in circumference.  Below the suburb of Rome, lies a vast tract entirely covered with kitchen-gardens, and divided into two sections, which bear the name of upper and lower Baltan.  A long avenue of poplars leads from the town across the meadows to an ancient convent named Frapesle, whose English gardens, quite unique in that arrondissement, have received the ambitious name of Tivoli.  Loving couples whisper their vows in its alleys of a Sunday.