acquired or purchased nobility, it is clear that here are to be found
almost all the great fortunes of France, old or new, transmitted by
inheritance, obtained through court favors, or acquired in business.
When a class reaches the summit it is recruited out of those who are
mounting or clambering up. Here, too, there is colossal wealth. It has
been calculated that the possessions of the princes of the royal
family, the Comtés of Artois and of Provence, the Ducs d'Orléans and
de Penthiévre then covered one-seventh of the territory.[10] The
princes of the blood have together a revenue of from 24 to 25
millions; the Duc d'Orléans alone has a rental of 11,500,000.[11] --
These are the vestiges of the feudal régime. Similar vestiges are
found in England, in Austria, in Germany and in Russia.
Proprietorship, indeed, survives a long time survives the
circumstances on which it is founded. Sovereignty had constituted
property; divorced from sovereignty it has remained in the hands
formerly sovereign. In the bishop, the abbot and the count, the king
respected the proprietor while overthrowing the rival, and, in the
existing proprietor a hundred traits still indicate the annihilated or
modified sovereign.

III. Their Immunities.

Such is the total or partial exemption from taxation. The tax-
collectors halt in their presence because the king well knows that
feudal property has the same origin as his own; if royalty is one
privilege seigniory is another; the king himself is simply the most
privileged among the privileged. The most absolute, the most
infatuated with his rights, Louis XIV, entertained scruples when
extreme necessity compelled him to enforce on everybody the tax of the
tenth.[12] Treaties, precedents, immemorial custom, reminiscences of