Not only did he then possess the public authority but also possessed the soil and the men on it.  Proprietor of men, he is so still, at least in many respects and in many provinces.  “In Champagne proper, in the Sénonais, in la Marche, in the Bourbonnais, in the Nivernais, in Burgundy, in Franche-Comté, there are none, or very few domains, no signs remaining of ancient servitude . . . .  A good many personal serfs, or so constituted through their own gratitude, or that of their progenitors, are still found."[28] There, man is a serf, sometimes by virtue of his birth, and again through a territorial condition.  Whether in servitude, or as mortmains, or as cotters, one way or another, 1,500,000 individuals, it is said, wore about their necks a remnant of the feudal collar; this is not surprising since, on the other side of the Rhine, almost all the peasantry still wear it.  The seignior, formerly master and proprietor of all their goods and chattels and of all their labor, can still exact of them from ten to twelve corvées per annum and a fixed annual tax.  In the barony of Choiseul near Chaumont in Champagne, “the inhabitants are required to plow his lands, to sow and reap them for his account and to put the products into his barns.  Each plot of ground, each house, every head of cattle pays a quit-claim; children may inherit from their parents only on condition of remaining with them; if absent at the time of their decease he is the inheritor.”  This is what was styled in the language of the day an estate “with excellent dues.” -Elsewhere the seignior inherits from collaterals, brothers or nephews, if they were not in community with the defunct at the moment of his death, which community is only valid through his consent.  In the Jura and the Nivernais, he may pursue fugitive serfs, and demand, at their death, not only the property left by them on his domain, but, again, the pittance acquired by them elsewhere.  At Saint-Claude he acquires this right over any person that passes a year and a day in a house belonging to the seigniory.  As to ownership of the soil we see still more clearly that he once had entire possession of it.  In the district subject to his jurisdiction the public domain remains his private domain; roads, streets and open squares form a part of it; he has the right to plant trees in them and to take trees up.  In many provinces, through a pasturage rent, he obliges the inhabitants to pay for permits to pasture their cattle in the fields after the crop, and in the open common lands, (les terres vaines et vagues).  Unnavigable streams belong to him, as well as islets and accumulations formed in them and the fish that are found in them.  He has the right of the chase over the whole extent of his jurisdiction, this or that commoner being sometimes compelled to throw open to him his park enclosed by walls.