But he would be wrong. This diversified culture of modern Picardy has been highly remunerative, and the extensive kitchen-gardening of the province is so still. The 'agricultural crisis' has doubtless hit the large farmers rather hard, but I am told they are standing up well under it--thanks to their past savings, and to French protection--better, indeed, than the large farmers in England; while the peasants proper are actually profiting by it. They not only get as much for their labour as when the large farmers were making money, but they are buying up land at lower rates. This may very possibly help the Republicans in the coming elections, for the peasants always give the credit of a state of things which is satisfactory to them to the Government of the day--be that Government what it may--so that while the larger farmers tend to Conservatism, the peasants will probably lean the other way. It is next to impossible to get a political opinion out of a Picard peasant, but I have more than once heard a peasant speak of the farmers in his neighbourhood as 'aristocrats,' which I took to be as precise a formula of political opinion as one was likely to get from him. It seemed to me to represent, among the peasants of to-day, the enlightened 'principles of 1889,' very much as the same formula, applied to the _noblesse_ of a century ago, represented, among the large farmers of that day, the 'principles of 1789.' Both then and now the formula simply means 'the man who has what I want to have is an aristocrat.' I think I have observed something like this in other countries--as, for example, in Ireland--where the guilty possessor of acres, however, is not only an 'aristocrat' but an 'alien,' as appears from a song popular in Kerry:-- The alien landlords have no right To the land God made for you; So we'll blow them up with dynamite, The thieving, hellish crew!