Among these letters of remission there are two which have particularly held our attention: one dates from the end of the fourteenth, and the other from the first half of the fifteenth centuries. The first concerns a man named Durand Tontif, a schoolmaster at Brienon. It was this teachers custom at the end of the class, to have his pupils recite, each in his turn, a _De profundis_ and a _Paternoster_ for the dead of the district. One day, one of the boys either wouldn’t or couldn’t recite the psalm and the master, from the height of his chair, struck the child several times on the head with his birch. In trying to escape, the poor boy was struck on his ears and face, and was soon drenched with blood. As he still persisted in not saying the lesson, the master sprang down from his seat, flung the boy on the floor and flogged him unmercifully. The wretched boy had been operated on a few days before for stone in the bladder and was not yet recovered. He struggled to his feet as best he could and dragged himself home to bed. He died a few days later from the blows he had received. The brutal teacher was arrested, but he obtained a letter of grace from the king wherein it was stated that he was ignorant of the boy’s condition, and that he had not flogged him from any feeling of hatred but simply with the object of discipline. Nevertheless he had to give up teaching and compensate the parents. That was in 1398. The second story shows that in the fourteenth century masters had little more consideration for servants than the worst of savages had for their slaves, and this state of things lasted till the seventeenth century. A groom’s daughter, aged eight, entered the service of a gentleman, governor of Langres. She was so ill-treated by her mistress that she hated her and only awaited an opportunity to get even. After seven different attempts, (she was now sixteen), she tried to blow the place up, having particularly in view her mistress’s bedroom. Caught in the act, she confessed. The whip has this undeniable superiority—before its omnipotence both gentle and simple have bowed. That we have already demonstrated. Since Henry IV, there is a long list of kings and princes who have been flogged. No-one thought that strange: it was the custom of the times. It required free spirits such as Montaigne or Rabelais to protest. Most people remembered that they had been through the mill themselves and had come out little the worse: their children must go through the same. There is plenty of evidence in existence, both written and illustrated.