Amiens--Picardy Old and New--Arthur Young and Charles James Fox in Amiens--'The look of a capital'--The floating gardens of Amiens--A stronghold of Boulangism--Protest of Amiens against the Terror of 1792--The French nation and the Commune of Paris--Vergniaud denounces the Parisians as the 'slaves of the vilest scoundrels alive'--Gambetta and his balloon--Amiens and the Revolution of September 1870--The rise of M. Goblet--The 'great blank credit opened to the Republic in 1870'--What has become of it--The Prussians in Amiens--Warlike spirit of the Picards--A political portrait of M. Goblet by a fellow citizen--A Roman son and his father's funeral--A typical Republican senator and mayor--How M. Petit demolished the crosses in the cemetery--M. Spuller as Prefect of the Somme--The Christian Brothers and their schools--M. Jules Ferry withholds the salaries earned by teachers--The Emperor Julian of Amiens--How the Sisters were turned out of their schools--The mayor, the locksmith, and the curate--Mdlle. de Colombel--A senatorial epistle--Ulysses deserted by Calypso--Why Boulangism flourishes at Amiens--The First Republic invoked to justify the destruction of crosses on graves--The Cathedral of Amiens and Mr. Ruskin. 73-94 CHAPTER VI IN THE SOMME--(_continued_) Amiens--Party names taken from persons--The effect of Republican misrule at Amiens--Why the Monarchists acted with the Boulangists--The Picards incline towards the Empire--How the Republic of 1848 captured France--Armand Marrast and the French mail coaches--Mr. Sumner's story--The political value of paint--Paris and the provinces--M. Mermeix offers with a few million francs and a few thousand rowdies to change the French Government--General Boulanger's campaign in Picardy--Capturing the mammas by kissing the babies--The Monarchical peasantry--The National Accounts of France not balanced for years--Conservatives excluded from the Budget Committee--The Boulanger programme--Expenses of the political machine in France, England, and America--The Boulangist campaign conducted by voluntary subscriptions--General Boulanger and the army--The common sewer of the discontent of France--The local finances of a French city--Municipal expenses of Amiens--Pressure of the octroi--A local deficit of millions since the Republicans got into power--The mayor and the prefect control the accounts--Immense expenditure on scholastic palaces--Estimated annual increase in France since 1880 of local indebtedness, 10,000,000_l._ sterling--M. Goblet on the growth of young men's monarchical clubs--History of the _octroi_--General prosperity of Picardy--Rural ideas of aristocracy--Land ownership in Ireland and France--'Land-grabbing' in Picardy a hundred years ago--The corvee abolished before the Revolution, but it still exists under the Republic, as a _prestation en nature_--Public education