inhabitants, devoted almost entirely to rural occupations, enjoyed a
great deal of leisure. The noblesse or gentry of the country were very
generally resident on their estates, where they lived in a style of
simplicity and homeliness which had long disappeared from every other
part of the kingdom. No grand parks, fine gardens, or ornamented
villas; but spacious clumsy chateaux, surrounded with farm offices
and cottages for the labourers. Their manners and way of life, too,
partook of the same primitive rusticity. There was great cordiality,
and even much familiarity, in the intercourse of the seigneurs with
their dependants. They were followed by large trains of them in their
hunting expeditions, which occupied so great a part of their time.
Every man had his fowling-piece, and was a marksman of fame or
pretensions. They were posted in various quarters, to intercept or
drive back the game; and were thus trained, by anticipation, to that
sort of discipline and concert, in which their whole art of war was
afterwards found to consist. Nor was their intimacy confined to their
sports. The peasants resorted familiarly to their landlords for
advice, both legal and medical; and they repaid the visits in their
daily rambles, and entered with interest into all the details of their
agricultural operations. They came to the weddings of their children,
drank with their guests, and made little presents to the young people.
On Sundays and holidays, all the retainers of the family assembled at
the château, and danced in the barn or the court-yard, according to
the season. The ladies of the house joined in the festivity, and that
without any airs of condescension or of mockery; for, in their own
life, there was little splendour or luxurious refinement. They
travelled on horseback, or in heavy carriages drawn by oxen; and had
little other amusement than in the care of their dependants, and the
familiar intercourse of neighbours among whom there was no rivalry or
principle of ostentation.