"That, messieurs, is the way I would make other people carry me on their backs if I were Monsieur Cardonnet, and it is what I am very sure Monsieur Cardonnet intends to do. Now, tell me that I am wrong to look askance at him; that I am a prophet of evil, and that nothing of what I predict will happen. God grant that you may be right! but for my part I can feel the hail coming in the distance, and there is only one hope that sustains me; it is that the stream will be less foolish than men; that it will not allow itself to be bridled by the fine machines they put between its teeth, and that some fine morning it will give Monsieur Cardonnet's mills a body blow that will sicken him of playing with it, and will induce him to take his capital and its consequences and carry it somewhere else. Now, I have said my say. If I have formed a hasty judgment, may God who has heard me forgive me!" The peasant had spoken with great animation. The fire of keen insight darted from his blue eyes, and a smile of sorrowful indignation played about his mobile lips. The traveller examined that strongly-marked face, shaded by a heavy grizzly beard, wrinkled by fatigue, by exposure to the air, perhaps by disappointment as well; and, despite the pain that his language caused, he could not help thinking him handsome, and admiring, in the facility with which he bluntly expressed his thoughts, a sort of natural eloquence instinct with sincerity and love of justice; for, although his words, of which we have failed to express all the rustic homeliness, were simple and sometimes vulgar, his gestures were emphatic and the tone of his voice commanded attention. A feeling of profound depression had taken possession of his hearers, while he drew without any artifice, and unsparingly, the portrait of the pitiless and persevering rich man. The wine had had no effect upon him, and every time that he raised his eyes to the young man's face, he seemed to look into his very soul and sternly question him. Monsieur Antoine, although slightly affected by the weight of the wine he was carrying, had lost nothing of his harangue, and submitting as usual to the ascendancy of that mind, of stouter temper than his own, he heaved a deep sigh from time to time. When the peasant had finished, "May God forgive you, indeed, my friend, if your judgment is at fault," he said, raising his glass as an offering to the Deity: "and if you are right, may Providence avert such a scourge from the heads of the poor and weak!"