tions; the melancholy sentiment of suffering
no longer prevails with the poor inhabitants, but rather one of utter
despair; they desire death only, and avoid increase. . . . It is
estimated that one-quarter of the working-days of the year go to the
corvees, the laborers feeding themselves, and with what?. . . I see poor
people dying of destitution. They are paid fifteen sous a day, equal to
a crown, for their load. Whole villages are either ruined or broken up,
and none of the households recover. . . . Judging by what my neighbors
tell me the inhabitants have diminished one-third. . . . The daily
laborers are all leaving and taking refuge in the small towns. In many
villages everybody leaves. I have several parishes in which the taille
for three years is due, the proceedings for its collection always going
on. . . . The receivers of the taille and of the taxes add one-half
each year in expenses above the tax. . . . An assessor, on coming to the
village where I have my country-house, states that the taille this year
will be much increased; he noticed that the peasants here were fatter
than elsewhere; that they had chicken feathers before their doors, and
that the living here must be good, everybody doing well, etc.--This is
the cause of the peasant's discouragement, and likewise the cause of
misfortune throughout the kingdom."--"In the country where I am staying
I hear that marriage is declining and that the population is decreasing
on all sides. In my parish, with a few fire-sides, there are more than
thirty single persons, male and female, old enough to marry and none of
them considering it. On being urged to marry they all reply alike that
it is not worth while to bring unfortunate beings like themselves into
the world. I have myself tried to induce some of the women to marry by
offering them assistance, but they all reason in this way as if they
had consulted together."[5109]--"One of my curates sends me word that,
although he is the oldest in the province of Touraine, and has seen many
things, including excessively high prices for wheat, he remembers no
misery so great as that of this year, even in 1709. . . . Some of the
seigniors of Touraine inform me that, being desirous of setting the
inhabitants to work by the day, they found very few of them, and these
so weak that they were unable to use their hands."

Those who are able to leave, go.

"A person from Languedoc tells me of vast numbers of peasants deserting
t