piece. A good many alienate the whole, excepting their small manor and
their seigniorial dues, the cens and the lods et ventes, and their
hunting and justiciary rights on the territory of which they were
formerly proprietors.[22] Since they must support themselves on these
privileges they must necessarily enforce them, even when the privilege
is burdensome, and even when the debtor is a poor man. How could they
remit dues in grain and in wine when these constitute their bread and
wine for the entire year? How could they dispense with the fifth and
the fifth of the fifth (du quint et du requint) when this is the only
coin they obtain? Why, being needy should they not be exacting?
Accordingly, in relation to the peasant, they are simply his
creditors; and to this end come the feudal régime transformed by the
monarchy. Around the chateau I see sympathies declining, envy raising
its head, and hatreds on the increase. Set aside in public matters,
freed from taxation, the seignior remains isolated and a stranger
among his vassals; his extinct authority with his unimpaired
privileges form for him an existence apart. When he emerges from it,
it is to forcibly add to the public misery. From this soil, ruined by
the tax-man, he takes a portion of its product, so much it, sheaves of
wheat and so many measures of wine. His pigeons and his game eat up
the crops. People are obliged to grind in his mill, and to leave with
him a sixteenth of the flour. The sale of a field for the sum of six
hundred livres puts one hundred livres into his pocket. A brother's
inheritance reaches a brother only after he has gnawed out of it a
year's income. A score of other dues, formerly of public benefit, no
longer serve but to support a useless private individual. The peasant,
then as today, is eager for gain, determined and accustomed to do and
to suffer everything to save or gain a crown. He ends by looking
angrily on the turret in which are preserved the archives, the rent-
roll, the detested parchments by means of which a Man of another