He is slow as the oxen he ploughs with, but as patient, as tenacious, and as obstinate.

He goes directly to his object, pressing firmly against the yoke; and nothing can stop or turn him aside.

He knows that stocks may rise or fall, fortunes be won or lost on 'change; but the land always remains,--the real standard of wealth.

To become landholders, the peasant starves himself, wears sabots in winter; and the imbeciles who laugh at him will be astonished by and by when he makes his '93, and the peasant becomes a baron in power if not in name." "I do not understand the application," said the viscount.
"You do not understand?
Why, what the peasant is doing is what the nobles ought to have done! Ruined, their duty was to reconstruct their fortunes.

Commerce is interdicted to us; be it so: agriculture remains.
Instead of grumbling uselessly during the half-century, instead of running themselves into debt, in the ridiculous attempt to support an appearance of grandeur, they ought to have retreated to their provinces, shut themselves up in their chateaux; there worked, economised, denied themselves, as the peasant is doing, purchased the land piece by piece.
Had they taken this course, they would to-day possess France.