To enjoy the temporal privileges of the religious life neither any great age nor any extensive learning was required. To hold a cure of souls or the abbacy of a "regular" convent (whose inmates chose their abbot), a man must be twenty-five years old. But an abbot appointed by the king need only be twenty-two, a canon of a cathedral fourteen, and a chaplain seven. It cannot be doubted that persons of either sex were obliged to make irrevocable vows, without any proof of free vocation, or any reason to expect a fixed resolution. Daughters and younger sons could thus be conveniently disposed of. A larger share was left for the family, for the religious were civilly dead, and did not take part in the inheritance. On the other hand, misfortune and want need not be feared for the inmate of the convent. If a nun were lost to the joys of the world, she was lost to its cares. To make such a choice, to commit temporal suicide, the very young should surely not be admitted. Yet it was not until 1768 that the time for taking final vows was advanced to the very moderate age of twenty-one for young men and eighteen for girls.[Footnote: Rambaud, ii. 45. Mathieu, 43. Chassin, 25. Boiteau, 176. Bailly, 421. Mme. d'Oberkirch, 127. Mme. de Genlis, _Dict. des Étiquettes_, i. Ill _n._, _Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France_, I. xxix. Mercier, xi. 358.] The secular clergy was about as numerous as the regular. It was principally composed of the _curés_ and _vicaires_ who had charge of parishes.[Footnote: The bishops, of course, belonged to the secular clergy. So, in fact, did the canons; who, on account of the similarity of their mode of life, have been treated with the regulars. In the French hierarchy the _curé_ comes above the _vicaire_. The relation is somewhat that of _parson_ and _curate_ in the church of England.] These men were mostly drawn from the lower classes of society, or at any rate not from the nobility. They had therefore very little chance of promotion. Some of them in the country districts were very poor; for the great tithes, levied on the principal crops, generally belonged to the bishops, to the convents of regulars, or to laymen; and only the lesser tithes, the occasional fees,[Footnote: _Casuel._] and the product of a small glebe were reserved for the parish priest, and the latter was liable to continual squabbles with the peasants concerning his dues. But the parish priest, with all other churchmen, was exempt from the state taxes, although obliged to pay a proportion of the _décimes_,[Footnote: _Décime_, in the singular, was an extraordinary tax levied on ecclesiastical revenue for some object deemed important. _Décimes_, in the plural, was the tax paid annually by bénéfices. _Dîme_, tithe (see Littré, _Décime_). It seems a question whether the proportion of the _décimes_ paid by the parish priests was too large. See _Revue des questions historiques_, 1st July 1890, 102. Necker, _De l'Administration_, ii. 313.] or special tax