It is proved by some portions of this correspondence that the timber contractors frequently exacted this forced labour even when they were not authorised to do so by the contracts made between themselves and the State, inasmuch as they thus profited at least one-third in the economy of their transport expenses. An example of the profit thus obtained is given by a _Subdélégué_ in the following computation: ‘Distance of the transport of the wood from the spot where it is cut to the river, by almost impracticable cross-roads, six leagues; time employed in going and coming back, two days; reckoning (as an indemnity to the _corvéables_) the square foot at the rate of six liards a league, the whole amounts to 13 francs 10 sous for the journey--a sum scarcely sufficient to pay the actual expenses of the small landowner, of his assistant, and of the oxen or horses harnessed to his cart. His own time and trouble, and the work of his beasts, are dead losses to him.’ On May 17th, 1776, the Intendant was served by the Minister with a positive order from the King to have this _corvée_ executed. M. Ducluzel being then dead, his successor, M. l’Escalopier, very readily obeyed, and published an ordinance declaring that the _Subdélégué_ had to make the assessment of the amount of labour to be levied upon each parish, in consequence of which the different persons obliged to statute labour in the said parishes were constrained to go, according to the time and place set forth by the syndics, to the spot where the wood might happen to be, and cart it at the price regulated by the _Subdélégué_. Note (LXIII.)--Page 115, line 22. EXAMPLE OF THE MANNER IN WHICH THE PEASANTS WERE OFTEN TREATED. In 1768 the King allowed a remittance of 2000 francs to be made upon the _taille_ in the parish of Chapelle-Blanche, near Saumur. The _curé_ wanted to appropriate a part of this sum to the construction of a belfry, in order to get rid of the sound of the bells that annoyed him, as he said, in his parsonage-house. The inhabitants complained and resisted. The _Subdélégué_ took part with the _curé_, and had three of the principal inhabitants arrested during the night and put into prison. Further examples may be found in a Royal order to imprison for a fortnight a woman who had insulted two of the mounted rural police; and another order for the imprisonment for a fortnight of a stocking-weaver who had spoken ill of the same police. In this latter case the Intendant replied to the Minister, that he had already put the man in prison--a proceeding that met with the approval of the Minister. This abuse of the _maréchaussée_ had arisen from the fact of the violent arrest of several beggars, that seems to have greatly shocked the population. The _Subdélégué_, it appears, in arresting the weaver, made publicly known that all who should continue to insult the _maréchaussée_ should be even still more severely punished.