Taxes innumerable were paid. But there was not money enough. Hundreds perished, that the beasts of Æsop’s fables might squirt water in the duck-ponds of Versailles. The royal mistresses sparkled with jewels, and each jewel cost a human life. One hundred millions of francs went in pensions, the Red Book told on whom. Exemption from taxes was given liberally; the king created nobles, the revenue created employés, all these were exempt. Thus, whilst the sum required of the people increased every year, every year the number of payers decreased. The load weighed on fewer shoulders, and became more and more oppressive. At Versailles, fifteen thousand men and five thousand horses were supported at the public cost to give splendour to the seat of royalty; they consumed sixty million livres per annum. The king’s house cost eighteen millions, that of the queen four millions, and those of the princes nine millions, though they possessed as their apannages a seventh part of the territory of France. The Church drew an annual income of four hundred and fifty millions; the tithes were worth eighty millions, and its buildings were estimated at five hundred millions. Of the land in France, one-fifth belonged to the Church. What was the condition of the peasant? It has been already described; it was he who bore the burden and heat of the day. On his toils the court, the nobles, and the Church lived. It was his blood that they sucked. The peasant might not plant what he would in his fields; pastures were required to remain pastures, arable land was to be always arable. If he changed his field into meadow, he robbed the curé of his tithe; if he sowed clover in his fallow land, the landlord or the abbot turned in his flock of sheep, to crop off it what he deemed his share. The lord and the abbot sent out their cattle to pasture an hour before those of the peasant; they had the right to keep huge dovecots, and the pigeons fed on the grain of the farmer. The tenant worked for his landlord three days in the year for himself, three days for each of his sons and servants, and three for each horse and cart. He was bound to cut and make and stack his lord’s hay in spring, and to reap and garner his wheat in autumn; to repair the castle walls, and make and keep up the castle roads. Add to all this the tax to the king, twelve sous per head for each child, the same for each servant, the subvention for the king; the twentieth for the king, that is, the twentieth portion of the fruits of the earth, already tithed for the Church. When we hear folk declaim against the French Revolution, do not let us forget what was the state of the people before that event. The Revolution was a severe surgical operation, but it was the salvation of France.