e bringing in twenty thousand livres
and more, we find that they all have ladies of rank for abbesses. One
fact alone shows the extent of these favors: I have counted eighty-three
abbeys of men possessed by the almoners, chaplains, preceptors or
readers to the king, queen, princes, and princesses; one of them, the
abbe de Vermont, has 80,000 livres income in benefices. In short, the
fifteen hundred ecclesiastical sinecures under royal appointment, large
or small, constitute a flow of money for the service of the great,
whether they pour it out in golden rain to recompense the assiduity
of their intimates and followers, or keep it in large reservoirs to
maintain the dignity of their rank. Besides, according to the fashion
of giving more to those who have already enough, the richest prelates
possess, above their episcopal revenues, the wealthiest abbeys.
According to the Almanac, M. d'Argentre, bishop of Seez,[1408] thus
enjoys an extra income of 34,000 livres; M. de Suffren, bishop
of Sisteron, 36,000; M. de Girac, bishop of Rennes, 40,000; M. de
Bourdeille, bishop of Soissons, 42,000; M. d'Agout de Bonneval, bishop
of Pamiers, 45,000; M. de Marboeuf bishop of Autun, 50,000; M. de
Rohan, bishop of Strasbourg, 60,000; M. de Cice, archbishop of Bordeaux,
63,000; M. de Luynes, archbishop of Sens, 82,000; M. de Bernis,
archbishop of Alby, 100,000; M. de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse,
l06,000; M. de Dillon, archbishop of Narbonne, 120,000; M. de
Larochefoucauld, archbishop of Rouen, 130,000; that is to say, double
and sometimes triple the sums stated, and quadruple, and often six times
as much, according to the present standard. M. de Rohan derived from
his abbeys, not 60,000 livres but 400,000, and M. de Brienne, the most
opulent of all, next to M. de Rohan, the 24th of August, 1788, at the
time of leaving the ministry,[1409] sent to withdraw from the treasury
"the 20,000 livres of his month's salary which had not yet fallen due,
a punctuality the more remarkable that, without taking into account the
salary of his place, with the 6,000 livres pension attached to his blue
ribbon, he possessed, in benefices, 678,000 livres income, and that,
still quite recently, a cutting of wood on one of his abbey domains
yielded him a million."

Let us pass on to the lay budget; here also are prolific sinecures,
and almost all belong to the nobles. Of this class there are in the
provinces the thirty-seven great governments-general, the se