total number of persons to be supported by the king amounts to more than fifteen thousand.

The king also gives many presents; this is especially true of Lewis XV. ; but we find that Lewis XVI., in 1785, gives away more than $27,000,000, and Von Sybel reckons that the annual average given in this way should be reckoned at $20,000,000. As for Lewis XV., it is known that in one year he spends about $36,000,000 on his own pleasures. As for the palace of Versailles itself, it costs more than $50,000,000, while

on the bridges, roads, public and scientific institutions" not more than $7,000,000 are expended.

Around the king are the dukes, counts, and marquises, who care for his household; among them are a few men, mostly of the middle class, whom the king has asked to take charge of public business. These are the ministers; as for the nobles, they spend their time with the king, gaming, hunting, making a fine appearance, amusing themselves.

All these nobles have great estates in the country, which they rarely visit. Arthur Young, an English traveller of the time, tells us that the nobility neither practise nor talk of "agriculture"; and as for their own lands, two of the greatest properties of the time are described as being "wastes, deserts, bracken," while the residence is "probably found in the midst of a forest, very well peopled with deer, wild boars, and wolves"; the owners are so lightly taxed that it is generally said that they pay no taxes. Yet one fails on a debt of $7,000,000, and another dies owing $15,000,000, and a third when charged by the king with being largely in debt, replies, "I will ask my agent and inform your majesty." Another owes more than $10,000 to her shoemaker, another more than $30,000 to a tailor.

Walpole writes, "It is no dishonor (in Paris) to keep public gaming-houses; there are one hundred and fifty of the first quality in Paris who live by it. . . . Even the princesses of the blood have their share in it."

St. Simon tells us that a baron, finding that the hut of a

peasant destroyed the symmetry of his park, brought the man to his own house, and kept him there while they removed the poor man's cottage elsewhere; a joke at which the king and his court laughed heartily.

St. Simon also tells us of a duke who "was better liked by the king and had more influence in society than anybody," but was a cheat and a gambler, while there were young men in "this singular society" who admitted to their tables notorious criminals, who had "animating stories to tell" of their own deeds "as forgers or highwaymen."

The daughter of the king's nephew and many of her companions are carried home drunk to Versailles, one night, while on another occasion the king finds the ladies of his household engaged in smoking, with pipes which they have borrowed from the Swiss guards; during the reign of Lewis XIV., many of the nobility are detected in secretly poisoning people.

The great middle class (bourgeoisie) compose the guilds, and are the artisans and merchants, manufacturers and traders of France. If a man pays his debts or has none, he is called bourgeois"; if he marries the woman he loves, "

66

very much

of a bourgeois," the term being used as one of ridicule. Among the bourgeois, says an observer, "every one speaks according to his views, inclinations, and genius; the women look after the house, the men after the day's business, coming home to some quiet game." "While the great neglect to learn anything... of the interest of princes and public affairs, and even of their own, . . . citizens instruct themselves in the . . . interests of the kingdom, study the government, . . . know what are the strong and weak points of a whole State."

The peasants live in houses of stone or earth, without windows and with earth chimneys. They are dressed in rags, and never taste meat; there are whole districts where they eat grass, and thousands who live on the bark of trees; they can neither take game from the forest, nor fish from the stream, for these belong to the lord of the estate. They have old and

awkward tools, and can get no better; when the crops are up, the pigeons and the rabbits and the deer destroy much that the peasant can raise; but he cannot protect himself under pain of heavy punishment, since the lord must have the pleasure of the hunt, and when the hunt comes, horse and hound may trample down his only wheat-field. The tax-gatherer never fails to come to get money for the king or money for the Church. Land worth $800 may pay $600 for taxes; it will surely pay $400; can the peasant not pay, his furniture must be sold to meet the tax. If he want salt, he must buy it of the king; should he not need it, still he must buy or go to prison or the galleys; this is the hated "Gabelle." As for his lord, to him he must pay for feudal dues, a part of all his fields, his orchards or his vineyard yield. For a certain number of days each year he must give his own labor and that of his oxen and his horses, even though the lord should choose to take him from the very harvestfield (corvées). If he is bound to give five days of such labor, and has a bad lord, he may be forced to give one hundred. He must bake in the lord's oven and grind at the lord's mill, though the miller and baker would do it cheaper and better. He can sell no wine after vintage, until the lord has had a chance to sell for thirty or forty days in the first market; he must pay a toll on the road, a toll at the ferry, a tax on all he takes to the fair. If he wish to cure the sick or discover a thief, he will "go to a sorcerer, who divines this by means of a sieve." In 1789, it is told and believed among the soldiers, that the princes and counts of Paris are throwing flour into the Seine so as to starve the people. "In Auvergne . . . a contagious fever making its appearance, two hundred men assemble to destroy the house of a man whom they believe has caused it by sorcery." There are very few schools; in one part of France but ten in fifty parishes.

For two centuries, at least, before the Revolution, the favorite resort of the Parisian populace is the place of execution, where they see the law carrying out its horrible punishments with all sorts of tortures, such as tearing by red-hot pincers.

STUDY ON LIFE OF THE "OLD RÉGIME."

Make a list of all the ways in which the king injures France by his style of life. To what class is he evidently in debt? In what way will they regard his style of life? What other classes injure France? What part of France or of her people is injured? How injured? What part of the French people is sound? Name the ways in which it is sound. Name all the ways in which the French peasant, or man of the fourth estate, is an undesirable citizen. What part of the French people will try to destroy this "Old Régime"? What part will try to reform it? Give reasons for each of these two answers. How far do you attribute the character of French life under the "Old Régime" to the organization of the State? Illustrate from each class of people. What were the ideals of this period? How were these ideals injurious?

5. Extracts and Sayings Illustrative of Thought and Feeling under “ Old Régime.”

"Kings are

As

"The royal authority and person are sacred." gods, and share in a manner the divine independence." all perfection and every virtue is united in God, so all the power of private individuals is united in the person of the king."

b. From the Kings.

"I myself am the State." "The worst calamity which can befall a king is . . . to be obliged to receive the law from his people." "All property of whatever sort within our realm belongs to us in virtue of the title of king." "It is the will of God, who has given kings to man, that they should be served as his vicegerents." "It is the will of God that every subject should implicitly obey his king."

"In dispensing with the exact observance of treaties, we do not violate them; for the language of such instruments is never to be understood literally."

"We ought to consider the good of our subjects more than our own, and it is a fine thing to deserve from them the name of father as well as master." (Lewis XIV.)

"I know what are the rights of the authority I have received from God. It is not for any of my subjects to decide what are their extent or to endeavor to limit them." (Lewis XV.)

"It is legal," said Lewis XVI., in speaking of a very illegal act, it is legal because I will it."

C. From Voltaire.

"It may be a question which is the most useful member of the State, the well-powdered nobleman who knows the precise hour at which the king rises and retires for the night, . . . or a merchant who enriches his country, issues orders from his counting-house to Surat and Cairo, and contributes to the world at large."

"How I love the boldness of the English! how I love men who say what they think!"

"I wish to write a history, not of wars, but of society; and to ascertain how men lived in the interior of their families, and what were the arts which they commonly cultivated.” 1

d. From Rousseau.

"Your very governments are the cause of the evils which they pretend to remedy. Ye scepters of iron! ye absurd laws, ye we reproach for our inability to fulfil our duties on earth!" "I am an active and intelligent being, and . . . I dare claim the honor of thinking."

"O conscience, divine instinct, immortal and celestial voice, the unfailing guide of an ignorant and finite but free and intelligent being." "There is no sacred and inviolable charter binding a people to the forms of an established constitution. The right to change these is the first guarantee of all rights."

1 In an important history of France put forth in 1770, the authors regret that historians had always given the history of a single man rather thar that of a people. "In the work of Montesquieu, on the 'Spirit of the Laws,' he studies the way in which . . . the legislation of a people is connected with their climate, soil, and food."

...