proaches to houses, and
informing themselves about their inmates and of their habits.--Woe to
those supposed to have money!. . . What numbers of highway robberies and
what burglaries! What numbers of travelers assassinated, and houses and
doors broken into! What assassinations of curates, farmers and widows,
tormented to discover money and afterwards killed! Twenty-five years
anterior (page 384/284) to the Revolution it was not infrequent to
see fifteen or twenty of these "invade a farm-house to sleep there,
intimidating the farmers and exacting whatever they pleased." In 1764,
the government takes measures against them which indicate the magnitude
of the evil[5332].

"Are held to be vagabonds and vagrants, and condemned as such, those
who, for a preceding term of six months, shall have exercised no trade
or profession, and who, having no occupation or means of subsistence,
can procure no persons worthy of confidence to attest and verify their
habits and mode of life. . . . The intent of His Majesty is not merely
to arrest vagabonds traversing the country but, again, all mendicants
whatsoever who, without occupations, may be regarded as suspected of
vagabondage."

The penalty for able-bodied men is three years in the galleys; in case
of a second conviction, nine years; and for a third, imprisonment for
life. Under the age of sixteen, they are put in an institution. "A
mendicant who has made himself liable to arrest by the police," says
the circular, "is not to be released except under the most positive
assurance that he will no longer beg; this course will be followed only
in case of persons worthy of confidence and solvent guaranteeing the
mendicant, and engaging to provide him with employment or to support
him, and they shall indicate the means by which they are to prevent him
from begging." This being furnished, the special authorization of the
intendant must be obtained in addition. By virtue of this law, 50,000
beggars are said to have been arrested at once, and, as the ordinary
hospitals and prisons were not large enough to contain them, jails had
to be constructed. Up to the end of the ancient regime this measure
is carried out with occasional intermissions: in Languedoc, in 1768,
arrests were still made of 433 in six months, and, in 1785, 205 in four
months[5333]. A little before this time 300 were confined in the depot
of Besancon, 500 in that of Rennes and 650 in that of Saint Denis. It
cost the king a milli