The argument that country dwellers held political opinions in the eighteenth century scarcely needs to be made. People have always thought about and talked about the issues that affect them personally. And those opinions may well have been informed ones: villagers received plenty of news and information from the outside world, either via administrative channels (through intendants and subdélégués to village municipal councils and local parish priests) or informal ones (including reported news, rumor, and individuals’ statements of their opinions and ideas). Informal channels long antedated the Poste du roi and continued in this period as a major means of communicating. Laura Mason has suggested that, during the French Revolution, political songs “outpaced printing presses and police alike” in conveying controversial opinions, and, indeed, it is not uncommon to find that news borne by a government-appointed messenger had already been received hours or days before via informal channels. Rumors of the attempt on Louis XV's life in 1757 reached the southwestern town of Auch, for example, by the correspondence of a merchant in Bordeaux, who had the news from an express courier who had stopped in Bordeaux on his way to Spain; given the shocking nature of the news, locals were unsure whether to believe it until corroborating evidence arrived in the form of the official letter from the secretary of state. Country people were both curious about developments taking place and well used to getting their information from people they knew or met.