If we have thus lingered over the love story with which Fléchier commences his _Mémoires_, it is because these milder episodes are, to our thinking, more agreeable to dwell upon, and, in their style of telling, more characteristic of the writer, than the details of barbarous crimes and sanguinary scenes with which, at a later period of the volume, we are abundantly indulged. We will get on to the staple of the book, the proceedings of the Grands-Jours. This tribunal, although, as already mentioned, it took cognisance of all manner of causes, civil as well as criminal, and judged offenders of every degree, from the meanest peasant to the highest noble, was intended chiefly for the benefit of the turbulent and tyrannical nobility, who in those latter days of expiring feudality, still oppressed their weaker neighbours, murdered their dependents, and kept up bloody feuds amongst themselves. Such excesses and injustice were common in Bretagne, Dauphiné, and other provinces of France; but we cannot trace them as having taken place any where quite so late as in Auvergne, whose remote position and mountainous configuration, as well as the rude and obstinate character of its inhabitants, gave greater liberty and pretext for a state of things recalling in some degree the lawless periods of the middle ages. "The license that a long war has introduced into our provinces," says the King's letter to the _Echevins_, or chief magistrates of Clermont, "and the oppression that the poor suffer from it, having made us resolve to establish in our town of Clermont in Auvergne, a court vulgarly called the Grands-Jours, composed of persons of high probity and consummate experience, who, to the extent of the authority we have intrusted to them, shall take cognisance of all crimes, and pass judgment on the same, punishing the guilty, and powerfully enforcing justice; we will, and command you, &c." "This letter," (of which the remainder refers to the quarters to be provided for the judges, and to the consideration to be shown to their persons and quality,) "read, with sound of trumpet, upon the principal squares and cross-streets of the town, produced an effect difficult to describe. One can form an idea of it, only when the picture of the Grands-Jours, unrolled before our eyes by Fléchier, shall have permitted us to imagine the system of oppression under which the people groaned. The letter was like a signal of general deliverance." (Introduction, p. xix.) Of deliverance, that is to say, for the lower orders, the vast majority, who foresaw, in the severity and omnipotence of the dreaded tribunal, revenge for their long sufferings at the hands of arrogant and lawless masters. The aristocracy of the province, on the other hand, few of whom could boast clear consciences, beheld the arrival of the royal commissioners with feelings far less pleasing; and although a body of them, including many notorious delinquents, went out to meet and welcome the Messieurs