had spun
the tissue of "regalian rights," the great net in the meshes of which,
since Louis XIV., all lives found themselves caught.[2314]

Nevertheless, however tightly spun was the web, there were openings
in it, or, at least, very weak spots.--And first, of the consequences
flowing from these three principles in their hands, two of them had
hindered the third from unwinding its skein to the end: owing to the
fact that the King was formerly Count de Paris and Abbot of St. Denis,
he could not become a veritable Augustus, an authentic Diocletian: his
two French titles limited his Roman title. Without regard to the laws,
so-called fundamental, which imposed his heir on him beforehand, also
the entire line of his successive heirs, the tutor, male or female,
of his minor heir, and which, if he derogated from immemorial usage,
annulled his will like that of a private individual, his quality of
suzerain and that of Most Christian, were for him a double impediment.
As hereditary general of the feudal army he was bound to consider and
respect the hereditary officers of the same army, his old peers and
companions in arms--that is to say, the nobles. As outside bishop, he
owed to the Church not alone his spiritual orthodoxy, but, again, his
temporal esteem, his active zeal, and the aid furnished him by his
secular arm. Hence, in applied right, the numerous privileges of the
nobles and the Church, so many immunities and even liberties, so
many remains of antique local independence, and even of antique local
sovereignty,[2315] so many prerogatives, honorific or serviceable,
maintained by the law and by the tribunals. On this side, the meshes of
the monarchical netting had not been well knit or remained loose;
and the same elsewhere, with openings more or less wide, in the five
provincial governments (etats), in the Pyrenees districts, in Alsace, at
Strasbourg, but especially in Languedoc and in Brittany, where the
pact of incorporation, through a sort of bilateral contract, associated
together on the same parchment and under the same seal the franchises of
the province and the sovereignty of the King.

Add to these original lacunae the hole made by the Prince himself in his
net already woven: he had with his own hand torn away its meshes, and
by thousands. Extravagant to excess and always needy, he converted
everything into money, even his own rights, and, in the military order,
in the civil order, in commerce and in industry, i