nobility of former days,” says the Marquis de Mirabeau, “spent too much time over their cups, slept on old chairs or pallets, mounted and started off to hunt before daybreak, met together on St. Hubert’s, and did not part until after the octave of St. Martin’s. . . .  These nobles led a gay and hard life, voluntarily, costing the State very little, and producing more through its residence and manure than we of today with our tastes, our researches, our cholics and our vapors . .  The custom, and it may be said, the obsession of making presents to the seigniors, is well known.  I have, in my lifetime, seen this custom everywhere disappear, and rightly so . . . .  The seigniors are no longer of any consequence to them; is quite natural that they should be forgotten by them as they forget . . . .  The seignior being no longer known on his estates everybody pillages him, which is right."[6] Everywhere, except in remote comers, the affection and unity of the two classes has disappeared; the shepherd is separated from his flock, and pastors of the people end in being considered its parasites.

Let us first follow them into the provinces.  We here find only the minor class of nobles and a portion of those of medium rank; the rest are in Paris.[7] There is the same line of separation in the church:  abbés-commendatory, bishops and archbishops very seldom live at home.  The grand-vicars and canons live in the large towns; only priors and curates dwell in the rural districts.  Ordinarily the entire ecclesiastic or lay staff is absent; residents are furnished only by the secondary or inferior grades.  What are their relations with the peasant?  One point is certain, and that is that they are not usually hard, nor even indifferent, to him.  Separated by rank they are not so by distance; neighborhood is of itself a bond among men.  I have read in vain, but I have not found them the rural tyrants, which the declaimers of the Revolution portray them.  Haughty with the bourgeois they are generally kind to the villager.  “Let any one travel through the provinces,” says a contemporary advocate, “over the estates occupied by the seigniors.  Out of one hundred one may be found tyrannizing his dependents; all the others, patiently share the misery of those subject to their jurisdiction . . .  They give their debtors time, remit sums due, and afford them every facility for settlement.  They mollify and temper the sometimes over-rigorous proceedings of the fermiers, stewards and other men of business."[8] An Englishwoman, who observes them in Provence just after the Revolution, says that, detested at Aix, they are much beloved on their estates.  “Whilst they pass the first citizens with their heads erect and an air of disdain, they salute peasants with extreme courtesy and affability.”  One of them distributes among the women, children and the aged on his domain wool and flax to spin during the bad season, and, at the end of the year, he offers a prize of one hundred