consigned to his honorary and available rights, but who nevertheless
remains a prince.[24] -- He has his bench in the church, and his right
of sepulture in the choir; the tapestry bears his coat of arms; they
bestow on him incense, "holy water by distinction." Often, having
founded the church, he is its patron, choosing the curate and claiming
to control him; in the rural districts we see him advancing or
retarding the hour of the parochial mass according to his fancy. If he
bears a title he is supreme judge, and there are entire provinces,
Maine and Anjou, for example, where there is no fief without the
judge. In this case he appoints the bailiff; the registrar, and other
legal and judicial officers, attorneys, notaries, seigniorial
sergeants, constabulary on foot or mounted, who draw up documents or
decide in his name in civil and criminal cases on the first trial. He
appoints, moreover, a forest-warden, or decides forest offenses, and
enforces the penalties, which this officer inflicts. He has his prison
for delinquents of various kinds, and sometimes his forked gibbets. On
the other hand, as compensation for his judicial costs, he obtains the
property of the man condemned to death and the confiscation of his
estate. He succeeds to the bastard born and dying in his seigniory
without leaving a testament or legitimate children. He inherits from
the possessor, legitimately born, dying in testate in his house
without apparent heirs. He appropriates to himself movable objects,
animate or inanimate, which are found astray and of which the owner is
unknown; he claims one-half or one-third of treasure-trove, and, on
the coast, he takes for himself the waif of wrecks. And finally, what
is more fruitful, in these times of misery, he becomes the possessor
of abandoned lands that have remained untilled for ten years.-Other
advantages demonstrate still more clearly that he formerly possessed
the government of the canton. Such are, in Auvergne, in Flanders, in
Hainaut, in Artois, in Picardy, Alsace, and Lorraine, the dues de