"Yes," said the youth, proud of an audience, "there might still be some work to be done here, in the old country; but we are taught nothing of such things in our schools; that would be too practical. Then taxes are too heavy, and rents too high; and all the time that we are leading a miserable existence, they out yonder are having magnificent harvests. That I hear every day. Our vineyards are ruined, and they have wine. Wheat grows without their having to dress the land, and they export it to us in shiploads as full as, from what you say, the granaries of the old Château used to be----" "Cock and bull stories! You have read them in books." "Some of them; but I have seen ships in port, and sacks of wheat being unloaded like the water of a dyke overflowing its banks. If you were to read the papers, you would know that everything now comes to us from abroad far cheaper than we can produce it ourselves: corn, oats, horses, oxen; and that we have competing with us Americans, Australians, and soon we shall have Japanese, Chinese----" he was intoxicated with words; he was but the echo of the few pamphlets he had read, or of what he had heard from others. La Fromentière heard him with stupor. China, Japan, America, the names circled round the room like some unknown variety of bird, brought by the tempest from far-off regions. The farmhouse walls had heard many uncouth peasant sounds, but never had they resounded under the shock of these foreign words. Astonishment was marked upon the faces that, in the light of the lamp, were turned upon Driot, who continued: "I have learnt things, I can assure you! I learn more every day. And, look you, when one comes home as I have done to-night, from rooting up a vineyard, it makes one savage to think that there are parts of America, and I could give you the names, where one can settle without opening one's purse----" "You be off!" quoth the ploughman. "Yes! Government gives the agriculturist his passage free; keeps him when he first lands; and gives him a ranch of seventy-four acres of land." This time the farmer shook his head, scandalised at the enormity of his son's statement, and said in a tone of disapprobation: "You are telling up a parcel of lies, my boy. Seventy-four acres, that makes two hundred and ninety-six roods. I am not much of a reader, it is true, but I do not let myself be crammed with all the stuff you believe in like the Gospel. Two hundred and ninety-six roods. Governments would soon be ruined if they made a present like that to everyone who wanted it.... Hold your tongue.... It vexes me to hear our native land talked ill of. Since you want to cultivate it with me, Driot, do as we do, and don't talk ill of it.... It has always supported us." There ensued an embarrassed silence, of which the farm-servant took advantage to get up, and betake himself to bed.