Ah, well! that would be a
deal too many for poor folks like us."
"Why?" Mathieu quietly inquired. "Haven't you got this mill, and don't
you own fields, to give labor to the arms that would come and whose labor
would double and treble your produce?"
These simple words were like a whipstroke that made Lepailleur rear. And
once again he poured forth all his spite. Ah! surely now, it wasn't his
tumble-down old mill that would ever enrich him, since it had enriched
neither his father nor his grandfather. And as for his fields, well, that
was a pretty dowry that his wife had brought him, land in which nothing
more would grow, and which, however much one might water it with one's
sweat, did not even pay for manuring and sowing.
"But in the first place," resumed Mathieu, "your mill ought to be
repaired and its old mechanism replaced, or, better still, you should buy
a good steam-engine."
"Repair the mill! Buy an engine! Why, that's madness," the other replied.
"What would be the use of it? As it is, people hereabouts have almost
renounced growing corn, and I remain idle every other month."
"And then," continued Mathieu, "if your fields yield less, it is because
you cultivate them badly, following the old routine, without proper care
or appliances or artificial manure.
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