30 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
in fact, no pleasanter climate in the world than that of the towns 
of Beziers, Perpignan, Hjeres, Antibes. Happy country — rich 
dwelling of man — if man, whose mission is to create after God, 
and to adorn his dwelling, had known how to profit by the bounty 
of nature ! But the civilized man, that inveterate enemy of his 
own happiness, has not acted thus. He has furiously laid low with 
his axe the mountain forests, that covered the tops of high chains, 
and carded the stormy winds, and sifted the vapor of clouds down 
in mild and fertilizing dew^s. He has denuded all the heights, and 
opened to the devastating breath of the maestral (northwest wind 
of the Mediterranean) the passes of the valleys, and the clouds, 
black with tempest, meeting henceforth on the crests which they 
graze, only sharp points of rock to tear their sides — the clouds 
have burst upon the hills, and their furious cataracts have ravined 
the declivities, and piled up below in plains the soil washed away 
from the hill-sides. The frost has nipped the vine — the maes- 
tral has driven back the olive and the tree with golden apples 
from the sheltered shores of the southern sea. And each year 
some new misfortune has afflicted cultures. On the last crop came 
inundations, the hurricane, or the waterspout — now the drouth, or 
contagious disease of the herd or of the harvest — and hideous 
famine, the purveyor of the criminal court and the executioner, 
seats itself in the hearth of the laborer of this blessed country. 
Eternal shame to its governors ! 
A noble land for all this, and cherished by God among all, and 
destined by Him as the tomb of all barbarity — the soil where the 
bones of the Huns and Arabs have slept for so many ages — a land 
where God has placed the heart of humanity — the pivot of intel- 
ligent life, where every cry of suffering, and all the curses of op- 
pressed nations must find a response, and whence the regenerative 
idea of liberty and fraternity was to gush forth, like the regenerat- 
ing arterial blood, to the very ends of the world. In one word, the 
land of the good God, the common country of all peoples, where 
every just cause was sure of finding martyrs ; every exile, a refuge ! 
Noble France, whose avenging name expiring nationalities lately 
invoked under the axe of the executioner, saying : God is too high, 
and France is too far ! 
