more than twelve of our departments, the princes of the blood appoint to all offices in the judiciary and to all clerical livings.  Being substitutes of the king they enjoy his serviceable and honorary rights.  They are almost delegated kings, and for life; for they not only receive all that the king would receive as seignior, but again a portion of that which he would receive as monarch.  For example, the house of Orleans collects the excises,[22] that is to say the duty on liquors, on works in gold or silver, on manufactures of iron, on steel, on cards, on paper and starch, in short, on the entire sum-total of one of the most onerous indirect taxes.  It is not surprising, if, having a nearly sovereign situation, they have a council, a chancellor, an organized debt, a court,[23] a domestic ceremonial system, and that the feudal edifice in their hands should put on the luxurious and formal trappings which it had assumed in the hands of the king.

Let us turn to its inferior personages, to a seignior of medium rank, on his square league of ground, amidst the thousand inhabitants who were formerly his villeins or his serfs, within reach of the monastery, or chapter, or bishop whose rights intermingle with his rights.  Whatever may have been done to abase him his position is still very high.  He is yet, as the intendants say, “the first inhabitant;” a prince whom they have half despoiled of his public functions and consigned to his honorary and available rights, but who nevertheless remains a prince.[24] —­ He has his bench in the church, and his right of sepulture in the choir; the tapestry bears his coat of arms; they bestow on him incense, “holy water by distinction.”  Often, having founded the church, he is its patron, choosing the curate and claiming to control him; in the rural districts we see him advancing or retarding the hour of the parochial mass according to his fancy.  If he bears a title he is supreme judge, and there are entire provinces, Maine and Anjou, for example, where there is no fief without the judge.  In this case he appoints the bailiff; the registrar, and other legal and judicial officers, attorneys, notaries, seigniorial sergeants, constabulary on foot or mounted, who draw up documents or decide in his name in civil and criminal cases on the first trial.  He appoints, moreover, a forest-warden, or decides forest offenses, and enforces the penalties, which this officer inflicts.  He has his prison for delinquents of various kinds, and sometimes his forked gibbets.  On the other hand, as compensation for his judicial costs, he obtains the property of the man condemned to death and the confiscation of his estate.  He succeeds to the bastard born and dying in his seigniory without leaving a testament or legitimate children.  He inherits from the possessor, legitimately born, dying in testate in his house without apparent heirs.  He appropriates to himself movable objects, animate or inanimate, which are found astray and of which the owner is unknown;