[Footnote 1325: Even after the exchange of 1784, the prince retains for himself "all personal impositions as well as subventions on the inhabitants," except a sum of 6,000 livres for roads. Archives Nationales, G, 192, a memorandum of April 14th, 1781, on the state of things in the Clermontois.--Report of the provincial assembly of the Three Bishoprics (1787), p. 380.] [Footnote 1326: The town of St. Amand, alone, contains to day 10,210 inhabitants.] [Footnote 1327: See note 3 at the end of the volume.] [Footnote 1328: De Ferrières, "Mémoires," II. 57: "All had 100,000 some 200, 300, and even 800,000."] [Footnote 1329: De Tocqueville, ibid.. book 2, Chap. 2. p.182.--Letter of the bailiff of Mirabau, August 23, 1770. "This feudal order was merely vigorous, even though they have pronounced it barbarous, because France, which once had the vices of strength, now has only those of feebleness, and because the flock which was formerly devoured by wolves is now eaten up with lice. . . . Three or four kicks or blows with a stick were not half so injurious to a poor man's family, nor to himself, as being devoured by six rolls of handwriting."--"The nobility," says St. Simon, in his day, "has become another people with no choice left it but to crouch down in mortal and ruinous indolence, which renders it a burden and contemptible, or to go and be killed in warfare; subject to the insults of clerks, secretaries of the state and the secretaries of intendants." Such are the complaints of feudal spirits.--The details which follow are all derived from Saint Simon, Dangeau, de Luynes, d'Argenson and other court historians.] [Footnote 1330: Works of Louis XIV. and his own words.--Mme Vigée-Lebrun, "Souvenirs," I.71: "I have seen the queen (Marie Antoinette), obliging Madame to dine, then six years of age, with a little peasant girl whom she was taking care of, and insisting that this little one should be served first, saying to her daughter: 'You must do the honors.'" (Madame is the title given to the king's oldest daughter. SR.)] [Footnote 1331: Molière, "Misanthrope." This is the "desert" in which Célimène refuses to be buried with Alceste. See also in "Tartuffe" the picture which Dorine draws of a small town.--Arthur Young," Voyages en France," I. 78.] [Footnote 1332: 'Traité de la Population,' p. 108, (1756).] [Footnote 1333: I have this from old people who witnessed it before 1789.] [Footnote 1334: "Mémoires" de M. de Montlosier," I. p. 161,.] [Footnote 1335: Reports of the Société de Berry, "Bourges en 1753 et 1754," p. 273.]