rocesses of
chicanery, delays and willful complications in the proceedings, sittings
at three livres the hour for the advocate and three livres the hour for
the bailiff. The black brood of judicial leeches suck so much the more
eagerly, because the more numerous, a still more scrawny prey, having
paid for the privilege of sucking it.[1351] The arbitrariness, the
corruption, the laxity of such a regime can be divined. "Impunity," says
Renauldon, "is nowhere greater than in the seigniorial tribunals. . . .
The foulest crimes obtain no consideration there," for the seignior
dreads supplying the means for a criminal trial, while his judges
or prosecuting attorneys fear that they will not be paid for their
proceedings. Moreover, his jail is often a cellar under the chateau;
"there is not one tribunal out of a hundred in conformity with the law
in respect of prisons;" their keepers shut their eyes or stretch out
their hands. Hence it is that "his estates become the refuge of all the
scoundrels in the canton." The effect of his indifference is terrible
and it is to react against him: to-morrow, at the club, the attorneys
whom he has multiplied will demand his head, and the bandits whom he has
tolerated will place it on the end of a pike.

One-point remains, the chase, wherein the noble's jurisdiction is still
active and severe, and it is just the point which is found the most
offensive. Formerly, when one-half of the canton consisted of forest,
or waste land, while the other half was being ravaged by wild beasts, he
was justified in reserving the right to hunt them; it entered into his
function as local captain. He was the hereditary gendarme, always armed,
always on horseback, as well against wild boars and wolves as against
rovers and brigands. Now that nothing is left to him of the gendarme
but the title and the epaulettes he maintains his privilege through
tradition, thus converting a service into an annoyance. Hunt he must,
and he alone must hunt; it is a physical necessity and, it the same
time, a sign of his blood. A Rohan, a Dillon, chases the stag although
belonging to the church, in spite of edicts and in spite of the canons.
"You hunt too much," said Louis XV.[1352] to the latter; "I know
something about it. How can you prohibit your curates from hunting
if you pass your life in setting them such an example?--Sire, for
my curates the chase is a fault, for myself it is the fault of my
ancestors." When the vanity and