THE IDEAL OF GOVERNMENT, 
61 
erywliere to replace noble races by vile and inferior species. Who 
can recognize in the miserable conscripts of our industrial cities — 
who do not even come up to the height of their muskets, and who 
congratulate themselves upon it- — the race of those Gallic giants 
who marched with songs from their homes to Asia Minor, and pil- 
laged Rome and Delphi on their passage. Civilization has ban- 
ished from the territories of France the elk, the reindeer, the bi- 
son, the urus, the fallow deer, the stag, the wild boar ; it has al- 
lowed the rat of Montfau9on and the cabbage-rabbit to multiply 
themselves there in disastrous proportions. This is no progress, 
if yet the multiplication of the pheasant, the peacock, the turkey, 
and the Guinea-fowl had succeeded in compensating so many loss- 
es. But civilized man is on fire only for folly and destruction; he 
is of ice for what is good. An intelligent administration, truly de- 
sirous to immortalize itself by great things, ought to have to-day 
but one aim, to cause larks to fall already roasted into the people's 
mouth ; for the most durable popularity is that which is based on 
the gratitude of the stomach. 
If the hunting king, Henry lY., has remained in the memory of 
the French people for having uttered the simple wish that the im- 
mense majority of his subjects might exercise their jaws once a 
week on the corded muscles of a tough fowl, with what laurel 
crowns would not the same people cover the head of the august 
monarch who had subjected it to a daily diet of roast chicken ! 
What am I saying of chickens ? better than that, if you please — 
a diet of pheasant and snipe, seeing that the snipe and the pheas- 
ant, which cost man no expense of feeding or education, come 
cheaper to him than the chicken. The same reason applies to 
sugar, which ought, in the normal state of things, to cost but half 
as much as bread for equal weights. I have never been govern- 
ment but once in my life, in Africa. As the price of beef passed 
the means of my subjects (it cost 2 francs, 40 centimes the kilo- 
gram^), I used to distribute gratis, two or three times weekly, a 
certain quantity of partridges and snipes. My subjects adored me. 
I repeat, that I know nothing easier to realize than these culi- 
* The kilogram is 2 lbs., 8 oz., 3 dwt., 2 gr. Troy. 
6 
