"I understand," he said, "that we are making a great mistake. Even in Paris, this crowd of Germans--crossing-sweepers, shop and warehousemen, carters, book-keepers, professors of every kind--astonished me; and since Sadowa, there are twice as many. The more territory they annex, the farther they extend their view. Where is the advantage of our being Frenchmen--paying every year heavier taxes; sending our children to be drawn for the conscription, and paying for their exemption; bearing all the expenses of the State, all the insults of the prefets, the sous-prefets, and the police-inspectors, and the annoyances of common spies and informers, if those fellows, who have nothing at all to bear, enjoy the same advantages with ourselves, and even greater ones; since our own people are sent off to make room for these, who by their great numbers lower the price of hand-labor? This benefits the manufacturers, the contractors, the bourgeois class, but it is misery for the mass of the people. I cannot understand it at all. Our rulers, up there, must be losing their senses. If that goes on, the working-men will cease to care for their country, since it cares so little for them; and the Germans who are favored, and who hate us, will quietly put us out of our own doors." Thus spoke my cousin, and I knew not what answer to make. But about this time I had a great trouble, and although this affair is my private business alone, I must tell you about it. Since the arrival of George, my daughter Gredel, instead of looking after our business as she used to do, washing clothes, milking cows, and so on, was all the blessed day at Marie Anne's. Jacob complained, and said: "What is she about down there? By and by I shall have to prepare the clothes for the wash and hang them upon the hedges to dry, and churn butter. Cannot Gredel do her own work? Does she think we are her servants?" He was right. But Gredel never troubled herself. She never has thought of any one besides herself. She was down there along with George's wife, who talked to her from morning till night about Paris, the grand squares, the markets, the price of eggs and of meat, what was charged at the barrieres; of this, that, and the other: cooking, and what not. Marie Anne wanted company. But this did not suit me at all; and the less because Gredel had had a lover in the village for some time, and when this is the case, the best thing to be done is always to keep your daughter at home and watch her closely.