pen arms, murderers, robbers, smugglers, fraudulent
bankrupts, and felons of every denomination; and never give them up,
until after having stipulated for their lives and liberty. I need not
enlarge upon the pernicious consequences of this infamous prerogative,
calculated to raise and extend the power and influence of the Roman
church, on the ruins of morality and good order. I saw a fellow, who
had three days before murdered his wife in the last month of pregnancy,
taking the air with great composure and serenity, on the steps of a
church in Florence; and nothing is more common, than to see the most
execrable villains diverting themselves in the cloysters of some
convents at Rome.

Nice abounds with noblesse, marquisses, counts, and barons. Of these,
three or four families are really respectable: the rest are novi
homines, sprung from Bourgeois, who have saved a little money by their
different occupations, and raised themselves to the rank of noblesse by
purchase. One is descended from an avocat; another from an apothecary;
a third from a retailer of wine, a fourth from a dealer in anchovies;
and I am told, there is actually a count at Villefranche, whose father
sold macaroni in the streets. A man in this country may buy a
marquisate, or a county, for the value of three or four hundred pounds
sterling, and the title follows the fief; but he may purchase lettres
de noblesse for about thirty or forty guineas. In Savoy, there are six
hundred families of noblesse; the greater part of which have not above
one hundred crowns a year to maintain their dignity. In the mountains
of Piedmont, and even in this country of Nice, there are some
representatives of very antient and noble families, reduced to the
condition of common peasants; but they still retain the antient pride
of their houses, and boast of the noble blood that runs in their veins.
A gentleman told me, that in travelling through the mountains, he was
obliged to pass a night in the cottage of one of these rusticated
nobles, who called to his son in the evening, "Chevalier, as-tu donne a
manger aux cochons?" "Have you fed the Hogs, Sir Knight?" This,
however, is not the case with the noblesse of Nice. Two or three of
them have about four or five hundred a year: the rest, in general, may
have about one hundred pistoles, arising from the silk, oil, wine, and
oranges, produced in their small plantations, where they have also
country houses. Some few of these are well bui