much more than in France.[1302] The squire,
the nobleman, possesses a still larger portion of the soil than his
French neighbor and, in truth, exercises greater authority in his
canton. But his tenants, the lessees and the farmers, are no longer his
serfs, not even his vassals; they are free. If he governs it is through
influence and not by virtue of a command. Proprietor and patron, he is
held in respect. Lord-lieutenant, officer in the militia, administrator,
justice, he is visibly useful. And, above all, he lives at home, from
father to son; he belongs to the district. He is in hereditary and
constant relation with the local public through his occupations and
through his pleasures, through the chase and caring for the poor,
through his farmers whom he admits at his table, and through his
neighbors whom he meets in committee or in the vestry. This shows how
the old hierarchies are maintained: it is necessary, and it suffices,
that they should change their military into a civil order of things and
find modern employment for the chieftain of feudal times.

II. Resident Seigniors.

Remains of the beneficent feudal spirit.--They are not
rigorous with their tenants but no longer retain the local
government.--Their isolation.--Insignificance or mediocrity
of their means of subsistence.--Their expenditure.--Not in a
condition to remit dues.--Sentiments of peasantry towards
them.

If we go back a little way in our history we find here and there similar
nobles.[1303] Such was the Duc de Saint-Simon, father of the writer,
a real sovereign in his government of Blaye, a respected by the king
himself. Such was the grandfather Mirabeau, in his chateau of Mirabeau
in Provence, the haughtiest, most absolute, most intractable of men,
"demanding that the officers whom he appointed in his regiment should
be favorably received by the king and by his ministers," tolerating the
inspectors only as a matter of form, but heroic, generous, faithful,
distributing the pension offered to himself among six wounded captains
under his command, mediating for poor litigants in the mountain, driving
off his grounds the wandering attorneys who come to practice their
chicanery, "the natural protector of man even against ministers and the
king. A party of tobacco inspectors having searched his curate's house,
he pursues them so energetically on horseback that they hardly escape
him by fording the Durance. Whereupon,