I was heartily glad that Colonel Charost knew so little English, that the greater part of the peasant’s conversation was unintelligible to him, since, from the first, he had always spoken of the expedition in terms of disparagement; and certainly what we were now to hear was not of a nature to controvert the prediction. In our ignorance as to the habits and modes of thought of the people, we were much surprised at the greater interest the peasant betrayed when asking us about France and her prospects, than when the conversation concerned his own country. It appeared as though, in the one case, distance gave grandeur and dimensions to all his conceptions, while familiarity with home scenes and native politics had robbed them of all their illusions. He knew well that there were plenty of hardships, abundance of evils, to deplore in Ireland: rents were high, taxes and tithes oppressive, agents were severe, bailiffs were cruel Social wrongs he could discuss for hours, but of political woes, the only ones we could be expected to relieve or care for, he really knew nothing. ‘‘Tis true,’ he repeated, ‘that what my honour said was all right, Ireland was badly treated,’ and so on; ‘liberty was an elegant thing if a body had it,’ and such like; but there ended his patriotism. Accustomed for many a day to the habits of a people where all were politicians, where the rights of man and the grand principles of equality and self-government were everlastingly under discussion, I was, I confess it, sorely disappointed at this worse than apathy. ‘Will they fight?--ask him that,’ said Gharost, to whom I had been conveying a rather rose-coloured version of my friend’s talk. ‘Oh, begorra! we ‘ll fight sure enough!’ said he, with a half-dogged scowl beneath his brows. ‘What number of them may we reckon on in the neighbourhood?’ repeated the colonel. ‘‘Tis mighty hard to say; many of the boys were gone over to England for the harvest; some were away to the counties inland, others were working on the roads; but if they knew, sure they ‘d be soon back again.’ ‘Might they calculate on a thousand stout, effective men?’ asked Charost. ‘Ay, twenty, if they were at home,’ said the peasant, less a liar by intention than from the vague and careless disregard of truth so common in all their own intercourse with each other.