The Life of Rossini

Here we are in the coach coupe, preferring this route a thousand times over private cars, and this is to better travel the rivers, lakes or seas on distant journeys whose various accidents cannot be specified in advance. We had little baggage to take, so to speak, like Bias, everything with us.

On the road, we see with pleasure the rapid progress of agriculture; the crop rotations shine everywhere in place of the barren follows: since the property is divided up, the less considerable fields are amended and taken care of; so true is it that the subdivision of land is advantageous to the masses and production. I know well that the prominent owner who asserts himself must act differently. In these wise economic measures, he aims instead at artificial and natural meadows, at the fertilizer of cattle, and then at the expensive cultivation of cereals. Still, it is not so with small farmers. The cultivation of rapeseed, which is so valuable in a large part of France, is spreading widely in the western departments: The land no longer remains unproductive under our hardworking inhabitants.

Here is a first relay, it is the small town of Montaigu. Here I will not speak of these bloody struggles of principle rather than of people, of the old and the new regime, of freedom or feudalism; the hour of reconciliation has arrived; everyone owns an acre of land and is attached to the soil: freedom of the press has come to soften the warlike mood of these countries: I believe political reactions are impossible, in this beautiful country, covered in funeral crepe, in rubble, and where the blood of so many victims have gushed only too often.

We see soldiers further away, changing winter quarters, humming a few bacchic songs without tripping or having a drunken leg. These frequent migrations are for a political purpose to break the intimate relationships between warriors and townspeople: these soldiers, painfully tired from walking on a muddy road by the weight of their weapons and their baggage; these descendants of their illustrious predecessors, who carried the glory of the French name even below the icy zone, approach our clarifier to inquire if they could occupy the vacant places; their few coins are not enough for the driver; they are obliged to continue the journey on foot, like the tireless Spartans, consumed with hunger and love for their homeland. Iron roads will one day make it easier to develop philanthropy, and the military will find a place on hospital wagons.