one sol, . . . and the Courier de l’Europe a fortnight old; and well-dressed people are now talking of the news of two or three weeks past, and plainly by their discourse know nothing of what is passing.  At Clermont “I dined, or supped, five times at the table d’hôte with from twenty to thirty merchants, trade men, officers, etc., and it is not easy for me to express the insignificance, — the inanity of their conversation.  Scarcely any politics are mentioned at a moment when every bosom ought to beat with none but political sensations.  The ignorance or the stupidity of these people must be absolutely incredible; not a week passes without their country abounding with events[38] that are analyzed an debated by the carpenters and blacksmiths of England.”  The cause of this inertia is manifest; interrogated on their opinions, all reply:  “We are of the provinces and we must wait to know what is going on in Paris.”  Never having acted, they do no know how to act.  But, thanks to this inertia, they let themselves be driven.  The provinces form an immense stagnant pond, which, by a terrible inundation, may be emptied exclusively on one side, and suddenly; the fault lies with the engineers who failed to provide it with either dikes or outlets.

Such is the languor or, rather, the prostration, into which local life falls when the local chiefs deprive it of their presence, action or sympathy.  I find only three or four grand seigniors taking a part in it, practical philanthropists following the example of English noblemen; the Duc d’Harcourt, who settles the lawsuits of his peasants; the Duc de Larochefoucauld-Liancourt who establishes a model farm on his domain, and a school of industrial pursuits for the children of poor soldiers; and the Comte de Brienne, whose thirty villages are to demand liberty of the Convention.[39] The rest, for the most part liberals, content themselves with discussions on public affairs and on political economy.  In fact, the difference in manners, the separation of interests, the remoteness of ideas are so great that contact between those most exempt from haughtiness and their immediate tenantry is rare, and at long intervals.  Arthur Young, needing some information at the house of the Duc de Larochefoucauld himself, the steward is sent for.  “At an English nobleman’s, there would have been three or four farmers asked to meet me, who would have dined with the family amongst the ladies of the first rank.  I do not exaggerate when I say that I have had this at least an hundred times in the first houses of our islands.  It is, however, a thing that in the present style of manners in France would not be met with from Calais to Bayonne except, by chance, in the house of some great lord that had been much in England, and then not unless it was asked for.  The nobility in France have no more idea of practicing agriculture, and making it a subject of conversation, except on the mere theory, as they would speak of