there cultivated between the upper and the lower classes; and that it
was in those provinces that a stand was made by lords and peasants alike
for the maintenance of the old order of things. In some parts of the
country the peasants and their lords were continually quarreling and
going to law. The royal intendant was besieged with complaints. The poor
could not get their pay for their work. They received blows instead of
money. Arrogance and injustice on the one side were met by impudence and
fraud on the other. The old leadership had passed away. The upper class
had lost its power and its responsibility; it insisted the more
tenaciously on its privileges. Exemption from certain taxes was the
chief of these, but there were others as irritating if less important.
Quarrels arose with the priest about the lord's right to be first given
the holy water. One vicar in his wrath deluged his lordship's new wig.

In general, we may conceive of the lesser nobles, deprived of their
useful function of regulating and administering the country, leading
somewhat penurious and useless lives. They hunted a good deal, they
slept long. Generally they did not eat overmuch, for gluttony is not a
vice of their race. They grumbled at the ascendency of the court, and at
the new army-regulations. They preserved in their families the noble
virtues of dignity and obedience. Children asked their parents' blessing
on their knees before they went to bed. The elder Mirabeau, the grim
Friend of Men, still knelt nightly before his mother in his fiftieth
year. The children honored their parents in fact as well as in form, and
took no important step in life without paternal consent. The boys ran
rather wild in their youth, but settled down at the approach of middle
life; the oldest inheriting the few or barren paternal acres; the
younger sons equally noble, and thus debarred from lucrative
occupations, pushing their fortunes in the army. The girls were married
young or went into a convent. Marriages were arranged entirely by the