the fields" was indignant, insulted, aggrieved, that he should be so contemptuously considered "miserable and oppressed:" he showed himself in the light of the landed proprietor, the most avariciously interested in the possession of property, and by no means the _naif_ individual the Parisian had been accustomed to believe him, according to his text-books of _vaudevilles_ and melodramas. The agents of communistic doctrines were forced to retreat in dudgeon, to declare the French peasant the most ignorant and pig-headed animal upon earth, still under the yoke of the tyrants, and _endoctriné_ by the aristocrats; and to avow that the departments were not ripe for the enlightenment of communism, perhaps even to denounce them as infamously reactionary. Certain it is that communistic doctrines found no enthusiastic disciples in the country; or, if the propagandism made any steps, it was after the fashion so characteristically depicted in a caricature published by the _Charivari_, in which a peasant appears before the mayor of his _commune_ to say, that, since a general _partage des biens_ is to take place, he puts down his name for the _château_, but makes a most wofully wry face upon hearing that his own field has been already divided among the paupers of the village. The propagation of communism, then, only excited fears instead of hopes, consternation instead of joy, and tended still more to indispose the country people, and excite their aversion and discontent towards a state of things likely to become so prejudicial to their interests: more than ever, they were disposed to revolt.