Ever since 1789 France has been trying to make man believe, against all evidence, that they are equal.

To say to a man, "You are a swindler," may be taken as a joke; but to catch him in the act and prove it to him with a cane on his back, to threaten him with a police-court and not follow up the threat, is to remind him of the inequality of conditions.

If the masses will not brook any species of superiority, is it likely that a swindler will forgive that of an honest man?
Montcornet might have dismissed his steward under pretext of paying off a military obligation by putting some old soldier in his place; Gaubertin and the general would have understood the matter, and the latter, by sparing the steward's self-love would have given him a chance to withdraw quietly.

Gaubertin, in that case, would have left his late employer in peace, and possibly he might have taken himself and his savings to Paris for investment.

But being, as he was, ignominiously dismissed, the man conceived against his late master one of those bitter hatreds which are literally a part of existence in provincial life, the persistency, duration, and plots of which would astonish diplomatists who are trained to let nothing astonish them.