pleasures, through the chase and caring for the poor, through his
farmers whom he admits at his table, and through his neighbors whom he
meets in committee or in the vestry. This shows how the old
hierarchies are maintained: it is necessary, and it suffices, that
they should change their military into a civil order of things and
find modern employment for the chieftain of feudal times.

II. Resident Seigniors.

Remains of the beneficent feudal spirit.-They are not rigorous
with their tenants but no longer retain the local government.-Their
isolation.-Insignificance or mediocrity of their means of
subsistence.-Their expenditure.-Not in a condition to remit dues.-
Sentiments of peasantry towards them.

If we go back a little way in our history we find here and there
similar nobles.[3] Such was the Duc de Saint-Simon, father of the
writer, a real sovereign in his government of Blaye, a respected by
the king himself. Such was the grandfather Mirabeau, in his chateau of
Mirabeau in Provence, the haughtiest, most absolute, most intractable
of men, "demanding that the officers whom he appointed in his regiment
should be favorably received by the king and by his ministers,"
tolerating the inspectors only as a matter of form, but heroic,
generous, faithful, distributing the pension offered to himself among
six wounded captains under his command, mediating for poor litigants
in the mountain, driving off his grounds the wandering attorneys who
come to practice their chicanery, "the natural protector of man even
against ministers and the king. A party of tobacco inspectors having
searched his curate's house, he pursues them so energetically on
horseback that they hardly escape him by fording the Durance.