'But why don't people get together and do something about it?'
Mademoiselle Ludérac smiled dimly. 'People when they get together in France only do so to quarrel,' she suggested, and she went on, giving Jill a new sense of her maturity: 'There is little margin in a place like Buissac for kindness to animals to grow up. That is what I tell myself. I feel with you;—I feel all you say;—but it is what I tell myself, for I think of it all, perhaps too much. Life is so hard for our people. And they have so little guidance. The Church teaches them that the beasts have no souls and are placed here for our convenience. What I tell myself is that, as conditions become easier and thought more free, it must improve. Men have improved in their treatment of each other. In the past, not long ago, they were as cruel to each other as they now are to the animals,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, and as her eyes fixed themselves on Jill with a look of suffering Jill remembered the old lady's story and the stoning of the mad mother with her child. 'To read history is to feel one's blood freeze, one's heart stop beating. They broke each other on the wheel; they burned each other at the stake. When people were mad, they were flogged and bound and often thrown to rot in horrible dungeons. When they had committed crimes, they were tormented and tortured before they were allowed to die,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, a strange light in her eyes. 'I do not speak of times long past; not of the Romans who made a pastime of men's suffering, as many now
