The _cahiers_ are full of commiseration for these poor disinherited sons of the Church. Villiers-sur-le-Roule and Tosny assert ‘that the benefice of their curés, reduced to the _portion congrue_, is absolutely insufficient for their support, and for enabling them to render help to the poor. The Abbé of Conches absorbs half the tithe, and he does not give a sous to the relief of the parish.’ At Muids, ‘the collegiate church of Ecouis receives all the tithes. The chapter gives nothing to the poor, and seeks only to augment the revenue. The curé is reduced to misery.’ The situation is the same at Saint-Aubin-sur-Gaillon: ‘The extent of this parish makes the presence of a curate necessary, and as he receives from the Abbé de la Croix-Saint Leufroy, who holds the great tithes, only three hundred and fifty livres, and as the sum is quite insufficient, he is obliged to go round at harvest-time, like a begging friar, through the hamlets, asking for corn and wine and apples. Surely this is lowering the priest, and is adding an impost to the already taxed parish.’ ‘When the curés have hardly a bare subsistence,’ says the memorial of Fontenay; ‘when they are reduced to live on what is strictly necessary, what can they offer to the poor? They have only their tears. Let the curés have the tithe of the parishes in which they minister.’ Still more hardly treated were the town curés, for the _portion congrue_ paid them was smaller in proportion than that given to the country priests, upon the excuse that the difference was made up by the increased number of fees. But it was forgotten that the charges and other expenses of a town, the calls on the priest’s purse, were far greater in a populous city than in a country village.