besides these, three lower and higher courts, and everywhere the
officials in the jurisdiction over woods and forests. Thirty-two
bishops, without counting the chapters, are thus temporal seigniors,
in whole or in part, of their episcopal town, sometimes of the
surrounding district, and sometimes, like the bishop of St. Claude, of
the entire country. Here the feudal tower has been preserved.
Elsewhere it is plastered over anew, and more particularly in the
appanages. In these domains, comprising more than twelve of our
departments, the princes of the blood appoint to all offices in the
judiciary and to all clerical livings. Being substitutes of the king
they enjoy his serviceable and honorary rights. They are almost
delegated kings, and for life; for they not only receive all that the
king would receive as seignior, but again a portion of that which he
would receive as monarch. For example, the house of Orleans collects
the excises,[22] that is to say the duty on liquors, on works in gold
or silver, on manufactures of iron, on steel, on cards, on paper and
starch, in short, on the entire sum-total of one of the most onerous
indirect taxes. It is not surprising, if, having a nearly sovereign
situation, they have a council, a chancellor, an organized debt, a
court,[23] a domestic ceremonial system, and that the feudal edifice
in their hands should put on the luxurious and formal trappings which
it had assumed in the hands of the king.

Let us turn to its inferior personages, to a seignior of medium
rank, on his square league of ground, amidst the thousand inhabitants
who were formerly his villeins or his serfs, within reach of the
monastery, or chapter, or bishop whose rights intermingle with his
rights. Whatever may have been done to abase him his position is still
very high. He is yet, as the intendants say, "the first inhabitant;" a
prince whom they have half despoiled of his public functions and