s, and the visits to
the governor and the intendant. A man must be either a German or an
Englishman to be able to pass three gloomy, rainy months in a castle
or on a farm, alone, in companionship with peasants, at the risk of
becoming as awkward and as fantastic as they.[1321] They accordingly
run in debt, become involved, sell one piece of ground and then another
piece. A good many alienate the whole, excepting their small manor
and their seigniorial dues, the cens and the lods et ventes, and their
hunting and justiciary rights on the territory of which they were
formerly proprietors.[1322] Since they must support themselves on these
privileges they must necessarily enforce them, even when the privilege
is burdensome, and even when the debtor is a poor man. How could they
remit dues in grain and in wine when these constitute their bread and
wine for the entire year? How could they dispense with the fifth and the
fifth of the fifth (du quint et du requint) when this is the only coin
they obtain? Why, being needy should they not be exacting? Accordingly,
in relation to the peasant, they are simply his creditors; and to this
end come the feudal regime transformed by the monarchy. Around the
chateau I see sympathies declining, envy raising its head, and hatreds
on the increase. Set aside in public matters, freed from taxation, the
seignior remains isolated and a stranger among his vassals; his extinct
authority with his unimpaired privileges form for him an existence
apart. When he emerges from it, it is to forcibly add to the public
misery. From this soil, ruined by the tax-man, he takes a portion of its
product, so much it, sheaves of wheat and so many measures of wine. His
pigeons and his game eat up the crops. People are obliged to grind in
his mill, and to leave with him a sixteenth of the flour. The sale of a
field for the sum of six hundred livres puts one hundred livres into
his pocket. A brother's inheritance reaches a brother only after he has
gnawed out of it a year's income. A score of other dues, formerly
of public benefit, no longer serve but to support a useless private
individual. The peasant, then as today, is eager for gain, determined
and accustomed to do and to suffer everything to save or gain a crown.
He ends by looking angrily on the turret in which are preserved the
archives, the rent-roll, the detested parchments by means of which a Man
of another species, favored to the detriment of the rest, a univ