ghs at those passing by,
and says to himself when he sees a gentleman going hawking with a bird on
his wrist, "Ah! that bird will eat a hen to-day, and our children could
all feast upon it!" Another is described as a sort of madman who equally
despises God, the saints, the Church, and the nobility. His neighbour is
an honest simpleton, who, stopping in admiration before the doorway of
Notre Dame in Paris in order to admire the statues of Pepin, Charlemagne,
and their successors, has his pocket picked of his purse. Another villain
is supposed to make trade of pleading the cause of others before "Messire
le Bailli;" he is very eloquent in trying to show that in the time of
their ancestors the cows had a free right of pasture in such and such a
meadow, or the sheep on such and such a ridge; then there is the miser,
and the speculator, who converts all his possessions into ready money, so
as to purchase grain against a bad season; but of course the harvest turns
out to be excellent, and he does not make a farthing, but runs away to
conceal his ruin and rage. There is also the villain who leaves his plough
to become a poacher. There are many other curious examples which
altogether tend to prove that there has been but little change in the
villager class since the first periods of History.

[Illustration: Fig. 68.--The covetous and avaricious Villain.--From a
Miniature in "Proverbes et Adages, &c," Manuscript in the National Library
of Paris, with this legend:

"Je suis icy levant les yeulx
Eu ce haut lieu des attendens,
En convoitant pour avoir mieulx
Prendre la lune avec les dens."

("Even on this lofty height
We yet look higher,
As nothing will satisfy us
But to clutch the moon.")
]

Notwithstanding the miseries to which they were generally subject, the
rural population had their days of rest and amusement, which were then
much more numerous than at present. At that period the festivals of the
Church were frequent and rigidly kept, and as each of them was the pretext
for a forced holiday from manual labour, the peasants thought of nothing,
after church, but of amusing themselves; they drank, talked, sang,
danced, and, above all, laughed, for the laugh of our forefathers quite
rivalled the Homeric laugh, and burst forth with a noisy joviality (Fig.
69).

The "wakes," or evening parties, which are still the custom in most of the
French provinces, and which are of very ancient origin, formed important