Certain keen, good-natured observations showed that they
were not taken in as to the merits of the case, but since the war was
there they made the most they could out of it. They might lose
their sons, but they did not mean to lose money; not that they were
heartless, grief had marked them deeply, though they spoke little of
it; but after all, men pass away,--the land is always there. They at
least had not, like the _bourgeois_ in cities, sent their children to
death through national fanaticism. Only they knew how to get something
in exchange for what they gave; and it is probable that their sons
would have thought this perfectly natural. Because you have lost
someone you love, must you lose your head too? Our peasants did not
lose theirs; it is said that in the country districts of France more
than a million new proprietors have been made by the war.
The mind of Clerambault was alien to all this; he and these people did
not speak the same language. They exchanged some vague condolences,
but when he is talking to a _bourgeois_ a peasant always complains; it
is a habit, a way of defending himself against a possible appeal
to his pocketbook; they would have talked in the same way about an
epidemic of fever. Clerambault was always the Parisian in their eyes;
he belonged to another tribe, and if they had thoughts, they would not
tell them to him.
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