r, and
the flesh of these had to be salted down. The good housewife would, of
course, know something of the process. Though in large households the
management of the male servants, the outdoor servants generally, fell to
the steward or baillie, the lady even here undoubtedly had to give a
general supervision, and had to provide work for and maintain discipline
among the women of the household. It must have required no small amount
of ability and tact, therefore, successfully to be the lady of the
chateau.

We need not pause here to consider the amusements and the traditional
occupations of women, such as fine sewing and embroidery, or music and
the care of flowers. These can best be noticed when we examine the
romances of a later age.

For women of the upper classes feudalism was not, we may say, entirely
unjust or evil in its operations; but as feudalism meant oppression
verging on slavery for Jacques Bonhomme, the peasant, his wife Jeanne
could hardly have been in better case. With peasant marriages the
seigneur could interfere even more tyrannically than with those of his
feudal wards. In some places the bride and groom owed to the seigneur
certain gifts called _mets de manage_. On the day of the wedding these
"must be brought to the chateau by the bride, accompanied by musicians;
the said mets shall consist of a leg of mutton, two fowls, two quarts of
wine, four loaves of bread, four candles, and some salt, under pain of a
fine of sixty sous." In some places that most infamous right known _par
excellence_ as the _droit du seigneur_ was claimed, and we find a writer
even as late as the seventeenth century recording the fact that the
husband was sometimes required to purchase his bride's exemption from
this right.

At the early date of which we write, however, there is little or no
information to be had about the peasantry; the monkish chroniclers
mention them but rarely, and then unsympathetically. Popular literature,
with its _lais, contes, fabliaux_, or rude dramas in which Jacques and
Jeanne appear, did not yet exist. We may, however, guess from the
barbarity with which they were treated how near to that of the brutes
was their condition.

About the year 997, soon after the death of the glorious Duke Robert the
Fearless, the peasants of Normandy began to murmur against the wrongs
they had to suffer. "The seigneurs," they said, "only do us harm; on
account of them we have neither gain nor profit from our labor