ry Sunday and
every fete-day they are posted at the church door to warn delinquents;
and then, during the week they go from door to door to obtain their
dues. "Commonly they cannot write, and take a scribe with them." Out of
six hundred and six traversing the district of Saint-Flour not ten of
them are able to read the official summons and sign a receipt; hence
innumerable mistakes and frauds. Besides a scribe they take along the
bailiff's subordinates, persons of the lowest class, laborers without
work, conscious of being hated and who act accordingly. "Whatever orders
may be given them not to take anything, not to make the inhabitants feed
them, or to enter taverns with collectors," habit is too strong "and
the abuse continues."[5225] But, burdensome as the bailiff's men may be,
care is taken not to evade them. In this respect, writes an intendant,
"their obduracy is strange." "No person," a receiver reports,[5226]
"pays the collector until he sees the bailiff's man in his house." The
peasant resembles his ass, refusing to go without being beaten, and,
although in this he may appear stupid, he is clever. For the collector,
being responsible, "naturally inclines to an increase of the assessment
on prompt payers to the advantage of the negligent. Hence the prompt
payer becomes, in his turn, negligent and, although with money in
his chest, he allows the process to go on."[5227] Summing all up, he
calculates that the process, even if expensive, costs less than extra
taxation, and of the two evils he chooses the least. He has but one
resource against the collector and receiver, his simulated or actual
poverty, voluntary or involuntary. "Every one subject to the taille,"
says, again, the provincial assembly of Berry, "dreads to expose his
resources; he avoids any display of these in his furniture, in
his dress, in his food, and in everything open to another's
observation."--"M. de Choiseul-Gouffier,[5228] willing to roof his
peasants' houses, liable to take fire, with tiles, they thanked him for
his kindness but begged him to leave them as they were, telling him
that if these were covered with tiles, instead of with thatch, the
subdelegates would increase their taxation."--"People work, but merely
to satisfy their prime necessities. . . . The fear of paying an
extra crown makes an average man neglect a profit of four times the
amount."[5229]--". . . Accordingly, lean cattle, poor implements,
and bad manure-heaps even among t