prise would be no greater if at the present day it were
proposed to divide the income of each millionaire into two portions, the
smallest to go for the owner's support, and the largest to be placed in
the hands of a government to be expended in works of public utility.
An old farmer-general, an intellectual and unprejudiced man, gravely
attempts to justify the purchase of Saint-Cloud by calling it "a ring
for the queen's finger." The ring cost, indeed, 7,700,000 francs, but
"the king of France then had an income of 447,000,000. What could be
said of any private individual who, with 477,000 livres income, should,
for once in his life, give his wife diamonds worth 7,000 or 8,000
livres?"[1438] People would say that the gift is moderate, and that the
husband is reasonable.

To properly understand the history of our kings, let the fundamental
principle be always recognized that France is their land, a farm
transmitted from father to son, at first small, then slowly enlarged,
and, at last, prodigiously enlarged, because the proprietor, always
alert, has found means to make favorable additions to it at the expense
of his neighbors; at the end of eight hundred years it comprises
about 27,000 square leagues of territory. His interests and his vanity
harmonize, certainly, in several areas with public welfare; he is, all
in all, not a poor administrator, and, since he has always expanded his
territory, he has done better than many others. Moreover, around him,
a number of expert individuals, old family councilors, withdrawn from
business and devoted to the domain, with good heads an gray beards,
respectfully remonstrate with him when he spends too freely; they often
interest him in public improvements, in roads, canals, homes for
the invalids, military schools, scientific institutions and charity
workshops; in the control of trust-funds and foundations, in the
tolerance of heretics, in the postponement of monastic vows to the age
of twenty-one, in provincial assemblies, and in other reforms by which
a feudal domain becomes transformed into a modern domain. Nevertheless,
the country, feudal or modern, remains his property, which he can abuse
as well as use; however, whoever uses with full sway ends by abusing
with full license. If, in his ordinary conduct, personal motives do not
prevail over public motives, he might be a saint like Louis IX, a stoic
like Marcus Aurelius, while remaining a seignior, a man of the
world like the peo