the overseer of an estate. A certain family with
nothing but a small farm "attests its nobility only by the pigeon-house;
it lives like the peasants, eating nothing but brown bread." Another
gentleman, a widower, "passes his time in drinking, living licentiously
with his servants, and covering butter-pots with the handsomest
title-deeds of his lineage." All the chevaliers de Chateaubriand," says
the father, "were drunkards and beaters of hares." He himself just makes
shift to live in a miserable way, with five domestics, a hound and two
old mares "in a chateau capable of accommodating a hundred seigniors
with their suites." Here and there in the various memoirs we see these
strange superannuated figures passing before the eye, for instance,
in Burgundy, "gentlemen huntsmen wearing gaiters and hob-nailed shoes,
carrying an old rusty sword under their arms dying with hunger and
refusing to work."[1318] Elsewhere we encounter "M. de Perignan, with
his red garments, wig and ginger face, having dry stone wails built on
his domain, and getting intoxicated with the blacksmith of the
place;" related to Cardinal Fleury, he is made the first Duc de
Fleury.-Everything contributes to this decay, the law, habits and
customs, and, above all, the right of primogeniture. Instituted for the
purpose of maintaining undivided sovereignty and patronage it ruins the
nobles since sovereignty and patronage have no material to work on. "In
Brittany," says Chateaubriand, "the elder sons of the nobles swept away
two-thirds of the property, while the younger sons shared in one-third
of the paternal heritage."[1319] Consequently, "the younger sons of
younger sons soon come to the sharing of a pigeon, rabbit, hound and
fowling-piece. The entire fortune of my grandfather did not exceed five
thousand livres income, of which his elder son had two-thirds, three
thousand three hundred livres, leaving one thousand six hundred and
sixty-six livres for the three younger ones, upon which sum the elder
still had a preciput claim."[1320] This fortune, which crumbles away and
dies out, they neither know how, nor are they disposed, to restore
by commerce, manufactures or proper administration of it; it would
be derogatory. "High and mighty seigniors of dove-cote, frog-pond and
rabbit-warren," the more substance they lack the more value they set
on the name.-Add to all this winter sojourn in town, the ceremonial and
expenses caused by vanity and social requirement