The one said: "It cannot be doubted that the solidarity of society demands that the homogeneity of economic interests should be recognised by the magistrate." The other said: "The first need is rather that the historic continuity of society should be affirmed by the momentary depositaries of the executive." For these two men were of some education, and saw things from a higher standpoint than the peasants around us, who continued to discourse, now angrily, now merrily, but always loudly and rapidly, upon the insignificant matter of their lives: that is, strong, red, bubbling wine, healthy and well-fed beef, rich land and housing, the marriage of daughters, and the putting forward of sons. Then one of the two, who had long guessed by my dress and face from what country I came, said to me: "And you, how is it in your country?" I told him we met from time to time, upon occasions not less often than seven years apart, and did just as they had done. That one-sixth of us voted one way and one-sixth the other; the first, let us say, for a moneylender, and the second for a man remarkable for motor-cars or famous for the wealth of his mother; and whichever sixth was imperceptibly larger than the other, that sixth carried its man, and he stood for the flats of the Wash or for the clear hills of Cumberland, or for Devon, which is all one great and lonely hill. "This man," said I, "in some very mystic way is _Ourselves_--he is our past and our great national memory. By his vote he decides what shall be done; but he is controlled." "By what is he controlled?" said my companions eagerly. Evidently they had a sneaking love of seeing representatives controlled. "By a committee of the rich," said I promptly. At this they shrugged their shoulders and said: "It is a bad system!" "And by what are yours?" said I. At this the gravest and oldest of them, looking as it were far away with his eyes, answered: "By the name of our country and a wholesome terror of the people." "Your system," said I, shrugging my shoulders in turn, but a little awkwardly, "is different from ours." After this, we were silent all three. We remembered, all three of us, the times when no such things were done in Europe, and yet men hung well together, and a nation was vaguer and yet more instinctive and ready. We remembered also--for it was in our common faith--the gross, permanent, and irremediable imperfection of human affairs. There arose perhaps in their minds a sight of the man they had sent to be the spirit and spokesman, or rather the very self, of that golden plateau which the train was crawling through, and certainly in my mind there rose the picture of a man--small, false, and vile--who was, by some fiction, the voice of a certain valley in my own land. Then I said to them as I left the train at the town I spoke of: "Days, knights!"--for so one addresses strangers in that country. And they answered: "Your grace, we commend you to God." ARLES