he is excluded and which he disdains. Far from protecting his
peasantry he is scarcely able to protect himself or to preserve his
immunities. Or to avoid having his poll-tax and vingtiémes reduced. Or
to obtain exemption from the militia for his domestics, to keep his
own person, dwelling, dependents, and hunting and fishing rights from
the universal usurpation which places all possessions and all
privileges in the hands of "Monseigneur l'intendant" and Messieurs the
sub-delegates. And the more so because he is often poor. Bouillé
estimates that all the old families, save two or three hundred, are
ruined.[17] I Rouergue several of them live on an income of fifty and
even twenty-five louis, (1000 and 500 francs). In Limousin, says an
intendant at the beginning of the century, out of several thousands
there are not fifteen who have twenty thousand livres income. In
Berry, towards 1754, "three-fourths of them die of hunger." In
Franche-Comté the fraternity to which we have alluded appears in a
humorous light, "after the mass each one returning to his domicile,
some on foot and others on their Rosinantes." In Brittany "lots of
gentlemen found as excisemen, on the farms or in the lowest
occupations." One M. de la Morandais becomes the overseer of an
estate. A certain family with nothing but a small farm "attests its
nobility only by the pigeon-house; it lives like the peasants, eating
nothing but brown bread." Another gentleman, a widower, "passes his
time in drinking, living licentiously with his servants, and covering
butter-pots with the handsomest title-deeds of his lineage." All the
chevaliers de Châteaubriand," says the father, "were drunkards and
beaters of hares." He himself just makes shift to live in a miserable
way, with five domestics, a hound and two old mares " in a chateau
capable of accommodating a hundred seigniors with their suites." Here
and there in the various memoirs we see these strange superannuated
figures passing before the eye, for instance, in Burgundy, "gentlemen