over all the fiefs of a region which numbers over seventy-five thousand inhabitants.  He appoints one-half of the aldermen of Cambray and the whole of the administrators of Cateau.  He nominates the abbots to two great abbeys, and presides over the provincial assemblies and the permanent bureau, which succeeds them.  In short, under the intendant, or at his side, he maintains a pre-eminence and better still, an influence somewhat like that to day maintained over his domain by grand duke incorporated into the new German empire.  Near him, in Hainaut, the abbé of Saint-Armand possesses seven-eighths of the territory of the provostship while levying on the other eighth the seigniorial taxes of the corvées and the dime.  He nominates the provost of the aldermen, so that, in the words of the grievances, “he composes the entire State, or rather he is himself the State."[26] I should never end if I were to specify all these big prizes.  Let us select only those of the prelacy, and but one particular side, that of money.  In the “Almanach Royal,” and in “La France Ecclésiastique” for 1788, we may read their admitted revenues.  The veritable revenue, however, is one-half more for the bishoprics, an double and triple for the abbeys; and we must again double the veritable revenue in order to estimate its value in the money of to day.[27].  The one hundred and thirty-one bishops and arch-bishops possess in the aggregate 5, 600, 000 livres of episcopal income and 1,200,000 livres in abbeys, averaging 50,000 livres per head as in the printed record, and in reality 100,000.  A bishop thus, in the eyes of his contemporaries, according to the statement of spectators cognizant of the actual truth, was “a grand seignior, with an income of 100,000 livres."[28] Some of the most important sees are magnificently endowed.  That of Sens brings in 70,000 livres; Verdun, 74,000; Tours, 82,000; Beauvais, Toulouse and Bayeux, 90,000; Rouen, 100,000; Auch, Metz and Albi, 120,000; Narbonne, 160,000; Paris and Cambray, 200,000 according to official reports, and probably half as much more in sums actually collected.  Other sees, less lucrative, are, proportionately, still better provided.  Imagine a small provincial town, oftentimes not even a petty sub-prefecture of our times, — Conserans, Mirepoix, Lavaur, Rieux, Lombez, Saint-Papoul, Comminges, Luçon, Sarlat, Mende, Fréjus, Lescar, Belley, Saint-Malo, Tréguier, Embrun, Saint-Claude, — and, in the neighborhood, less than two hundred, one hundred, and sometimes even less than fifty parishes, and, as recompense for this slight ecclesiastical surveillance, a prelate receiving from 25,000 to 70,000 livres, according to official statements; from 37,000 to 105,000 livres in actual receipts; and from 74,000 to 210,000 livres in the money of to day.  As to the abbeys, I count thirty-three of them producing to the abbé from 25,000 to 120,000 livres, and twenty-seven which bring from 20,000 to 100,000 livres to the abbess.  Weigh these sums