The Ancient Regime. Taine Hippolyte
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a ribbon which will make them recognizable.]
1317 (return) [ De Boullé, "Mémoires," p.50.—De Toqueville, ibid.. pp. 118, 119.—De Loménie, "Les Mirabeau," p. 132. A letter of the bailiff of Mirabeau, 1760.—De Châteaubriand, Mémoires," I. 14, 15, 29, 76, 80, 125.—Lucas de Montigny, "Mémoires de Mirabeau," I. 160.—Reports of the Société du Berry. "Bourges en 1753 et 1754," according to a diary (in the national archives), written by one of the exiled parliamentarians, p. 273.]
1318 (return) [ "La vie de mon père," by Rétif de la Bretonne, I. 146.]
1319 (return) [ The rule is analogous with the other coutumes (common-law rules), of other places and especially in Paris. (Renauldon, ibid.. p. 134.)]
1320 (return) [ A sort of dower right. TR.]
1321 (return) [ Mme. d'Oberkirk, "Mémoires," I. 395.]
1322 (return) [ De Bouillé, "Mémoires," p. 50. According to him, "all the noble old families, excepting two or three hundred, were ruined. A larger portion of the great titled estates had become the appanage of financiers, merchants and their descendants. The fiefs, for the most part, were in the hands of the bourgeoisie of the towns."—Léonce de Lavergne, "Economie rurale en France," p. 26. "The greatest number vegetated in poverty in small country fiefs often not worth more than 2,000 or 3,000 francs a year."—In the apportionment of the indemnity in 1825, many received less than 1,000 francs. The greater number of indemnities do not exceed 50,000 francs.—"The throne," says Mirabeau, "is surrounded only by ruined nobles."]
1323 (return) [ De Bouillé, "Memoires," p. 50.—Cherin, "Abrégé chronologique des édits" (1788). "Of this innumerable multitude composing the privileged order scarcely a twentieth part of it can really pretend to nobility of an immemorial and ancient date."—4,070 financial, administrative, and judicial offices conferred nobility.—Turgot, "Collection des Economistes," II. 276. "Through the facilities for acquiring nobility by means of money there is no rich man who does not at once become noble."—D'Argenson, "Mémoires," III. 402.]
1324 (return) [ Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," II. 271. Legrand, "L'Intendance de Hainaut," pp. 104, 118, 152, 412.]
1325 (return) [ Even after the exchange of 1784, the prince retains for himself "all personal impositions as well as subventions on the inhabitants," except a sum of 6,000 livres for roads. Archives Nationales, G, 192, a memorandum of April 14th, 1781, on the state of things in the Clermontois.—Report of the provincial assembly of the Three Bishoprics (1787), p. 380.]
1326 (return) [ The town of St. Amand, alone, contains to day 10,210 inhabitants.]
1327 (return) [ See note 3 at the end of the volume.]
1328 (return) [ De Ferrières, "Mémoires," II. 57: "All had 100,000 some 200, 300, and even 800,000."]
1329 (return) [ De Tocqueville, ibid.. book 2, Chap. 2. p.182.—Letter of the bailiff of Mirabau, August 23, 1770. "This feudal order was merely vigorous, even though they have pronounced it barbarous, because France, which once had the vices of strength, now has only those of feebleness, and because the flock which was formerly devoured by wolves is now eaten up with lice. … Three or four kicks or blows with a stick were not half so injurious to a poor man's family, nor to himself, as being devoured by six rolls of handwriting."—"The nobility," says St. Simon, in his day, "has become another people with no choice left it but to crouch down in mortal and ruinous indolence, which renders it a burden and contemptible, or to go and be killed in warfare; subject to the insults of clerks, secretaries of the state and the secretaries of intendants." Such are the complaints of feudal spirits.—The details which follow are all derived from Saint Simon, Dangeau, de Luynes, d'Argenson and other court historians.]
1330 (return) [ Works of Louis XIV. and his own words.—Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, "Souvenirs," I.71: "I have seen the queen (Marie Antoinette), obliging Madame to dine, then six years of age, with a little peasant girl whom she was taking care of, and insisting that this little one should be served first, saying to her daughter: 'You must do the honors.'" (Madame is the title given to the king's oldest daughter. SR.)]
1331 (return) [ Molière, "Misanthrope." This is the "desert" in which Célimène refuses to be buried with Alceste. See also in "Tartuffe" the picture which Dorine draws of a small town.—Arthur Young," Voyages en France," I. 78.]
1332 (return) [ 'Traité de la Population,' p. 108, (1756).]
1333 (return) [ I have this from old people who witnessed it before 1789.]
1334 (return) [ "Mémoires" de M. de Montlosier," I. p. 161,.]
1335 (return) [ Reports of the Société de Berry, "Bourges en 1753 et 1754," p. 273.]
1336 (return) [ Ibid.. p. 271. One day the cardinal, showing his guests over his palace just completed, led them to the bottom of a corridor where he had placed water closets, at that time a novelty. M. Boutin de la Coulommière, the son of a receiver-general of the finances, made an exclamation at the sight of the ingenious mechanism which it pleased him to see moving, and, turning towards the abbé de Canillac, he says: "That is really admirable, but what seems to me still more admirable is that His Eminence, being above all human weakness, should condescend to make use of it." This anecdote is valuable, as it serves to illustrate the rank and position of a grand-seignior prelate in the provinces.]