All went well as long as our old Duke Louis lived, for he shut his eyes to our goings on, being a man of sense who knew that you must not keep too tight a hand on the reins; he let us prance about and play the fool a little, knowing all the while that he was the master. His son, on the contrary, has the kind of conceit that prefers the show of power to the reality, and likes to mount his high horse on slight provocation. He ought to have known that a Frenchman will always sing and make fun of his rulers, and if that is not allowed, he rebels; for he cannot bear people who insist on being taken seriously, and loves those he can laugh at, or with, for laughter puts all men on a level. The Duke, then, issued an order forbidding us to play, dance, dig, walk on the grass, or trespass in any way on the Count’s Meadows: and a good time he chose for this piece of foolishness, just after all our misfortunes, when instead of annoying us, he ought at the very least to have remitted some of our taxes. He soon found, however, that the Clamecyans are not made of soft fiber, but are tough as old oaks, so that if you drive in a wedge you have hard work to get it out again. There was no need to call a meeting to protest against the edict; from all sides arose a deafening clamor:--“What, take away our meadows? The ground that he had given us! (or that we had taken, it is all the same!)--land that we stole four hundred years ago, which has been doubly sacred to us ever since?--all the dearer that we have been obliged to struggle for it day by day, and inch by inch; holding on to it by sheer tenacity! It was enough to discourage a man from ever taking what did not belong to him; enough really to make him sick of living! Our dead would turn in their graves if we were weak enough to yield on a point thus involving the honor of the city. The fatal order was proclaimed with beat of drum, by the town crier, who looked as if he were going to execution; and that very evening, there was a meeting held of all the men of importance in the city; the heads of guilds, the chiefs of brotherhoods and corporations, and those who represented the various districts, came together under the arches of the market. I was there, for St. Anne’s, and, as you may suppose, there were different opinions among the delegates as to what ought to be done.”