The Launching of Roger Brook

'I'll not gainsay that they are poor,' replied the Doctor, 'but the majority of them are by no means as poor as you might think. In most cases 'tis for quite a different reason that they refrain from patching their roofs and putting windows in their houses. As you must have seen, on Sundays and Feast-days the village women bedeck themselves in very different raiment to that which they wear in the fields. Their layers of striped petticoats and lace headdresses have cost good money, and few of them are without gold chains and crosses for their necks, so they can well afford to part with a few sous for a beauty ointment.'

'Why, then, do they live in such miserable conditions?'

' 'Tis on account of the taille,, my young friend, the most mon­strously stupid form of taxation that was ever devised by a government of fools. The King's Intendants assess each village at whatever lump sum they may judge it to be worth, and the village syndics, whether they like it or not, are forced to collect the money from the villagers. The syndics, in turn, are empowered to assess each householder quite arbitrarily, not upon his actual capacity to pay, but simply on the amount they think they can squeeze out of him. Each man is taxed, therefore, upon his presumed Wealth, and this is judged by his mode of living and apparent prosperity. As a result every villager makes an outward show of the direst poverty in order to get off as lightly as he can. This not only leads them to the self-infliction of many hardships which there would otherwise be no call for them to bear but it also strikes most savagely at the true interests of the country, since the peasants leave much of their land untilled from fear that bigger crops would land them with a higher tax assessment.'

'What incredible folly,' said Roger. 'But why do not the nobles who own so much of the land make representations to the King, and get the tax laws altered?'

The Doctor shook his head. 'The nobility of France still retains its privileges. Most unjustly all persons of rank are exempt from taxation, and they still possess the sole rights in shooting and snaring game, which is hard on the peasantry; but for many decades past they have lost all power of influencing the government. 'Twas the great Cardinal de Richelieu who destroyed the power of the feudal lords, and Le Grand Monarque completed the process by compelling them all to leave their estates and live as idlers at his court of Versailles in order to make a splendid background for himself. From that time on the running of the country fell into the hands of the Kings almost entirely, and they could know little of its state, as they were advised only by a small clique of greedy favourites and Finance Ministers who depended on the Farmers of the Revenue to suggest ways of raising money as best they could.'

'They seem to have made a pretty mess of things,' Roger com­mented. 'Our nobility in England would not stand for such mismanage­ment, nor would the people, either. Why, they cut off the King's head with less reason a hundred and forty years ago.'

' Twas neither the nobility nor the people who cut off King Charles's head,' corrected the Doctor gently. ' 'Twas the bourgeoisie; the lawyers and the rich tradespeople of the cities. And 'twill be the same here if the present discontents come to a head. The peasantry are too apathetic and too cowed to rise; the nobility has all to lose and naught to gain by so doing. But there is money in the towns, and money begets both ambition and jealousy of the privileges of the ruling caste. Of late years the reading of books by such as can read has spread apace, and such works as those of Messieurs de Quesnay, de Mirabeau, de Morelly and Jean Jacques Rousseau have spread abroad this cry for equality. Yet those who shout loudest have not in mind equality for the peasant with themselves but equality for themselves with the nobility.'

'Have you no body the like of the English Parliament that could put matters to rights without disrupting the country by a great rebellion?'

'We have no Parliament in your sense, to which the people elect their own representatives. There are the local Parliaments, which we term Estates. Each of these consists of three chambers, the Church, the Nobility and a third Estate composed of the representatives of the city corporations and the trade guilds; but they have never been aught but provincial municipalities. Time was, though, when they used to send their representatives to Paris to sit in the States-General and advise the Kings of France whenever there arose a major crisis in the affairs of the nation. But the States-General has not now been sum­moned for nearly a hundred and seventy years. The last time they met was in 1614; and since then the Monarchy has become so-all-powerful that it ignores them. As for the provincial Estates, from one cause and another most of them have ceased to function these many decades past, and only those of Artois, Flanders, Burgundy, Brittany and Languedoc continue to assemble regularly.'

'How is the kingdom governed, then?' asked Roger, 'for if the nobles play no part and these Estates you speak of are moribund, how can the King, hedged about as he is by a crowd of ill-informed wasters, know what is happening to his subjects?'

'Alas! he does not; though 'tis said that he is good-intentioned. By theory he rules through the governors of his provinces, but these are all great nobles who live in luxury at his Court on the huge incomes that their governorships bring them. In fact, the land is ruled by the Intendants appointed by the Comptroller-General of Finance, most of whom are clever upstarts with but one concern—to line their own pockets at the expense of both the King and the people.'

'But can the gentry do nothing to better matters?' asked Roger. 'In England all people who have estates, whether large or small, feel it incumbent on them to protect and succour their dependants. A landlord who allowed his tenants' cottages to fall into disrepair or left his village folk starving in a bad winter would at once be cold- shouldered by his neighbours.'

'Ah, and 'twas so here in the good old days. But the gentry are now almost as helpless as the peasants. All the wealth of the land is drawn either to Versailles in taxes or into the pockets of the lawyers and rich merchants in the cities. The upper tenth of the nobility, that which lives at Court near the King and grabs up the rich plums that fall from his table, does monstrous well; the other nine-tenths lives on its estates, mostly small properties that bring in barely enough to keep a roof on the Chateaux of their owners. They are mostly proud, aloof, hidebound in their ideas and jealous of their privileges; and they have lost both the inclination and the means to help their unfortunate peasantry.'

' Tis a parlous state the country has come to, in very truth; and what you tell me interests me mightily. Yet it affects not the fact that I find it ever increasingly repugnant to take their savings off these wretched villagers.'

'If 'tis that which worries you,' the Doctor said, after a moment, 'we will proceed yet further south into Brittany. The ancient kingdom is one of the few provinces in France where the Estates still function to some purpose. Moreover, the nobility there have never brought themselves to feel any strong allegiance to the Crown, and both rich and poor among them rarely leave their properties. I do not say that you will find the Breton peasants wealthy, out at least you will find them more prosperous and better cared for than those in the villages you have so far visited with me.'

So it came about that, having replenished their stock of unguents, balms and 'sovereign remedies' in Caen next day, they followed the road south-west through Vire and Avranches towards Brittany. It was the 20th of September before they paid toll to enter the province and, since leaving Caen, in spite of their outlay there, the funds of the partnership had mounted to forty louis, partly as a result of several profitable private consultations that the Doctor had given to patients coming to him after dark.

Roger now no longer participated in these harrowing and gruesome interviews. Apart from the disgust they caused him he had reached the conclusion that there was little point in his doing so, since he knew how many private visitors the Doctor received each evening and approximately what he was likely to make out of them. Moreover, he now felt convinced that the only time his partner was at all likely to attempt to cheat him was when they were in a town and the craving for brandy overcame the old man's better nature.

From the frontier of the province they struck south towards Rennes, intending to make a wide circuit of its interior after they had once more replenished their store, of drugs in its capital.

As the Doctor had foretold, Roger found the Breton peasantry much more alive and human than their neighbours to the north. They showed more independence and even, at times, heckled the great Aristotle Fenelon, questioning his encyclopaedic knowledge and his much-vaunted wisdom. At times, too, the Cures of the villages came out and drove the human benefactor away, upbraiding him as a godless charlatan. But, in spite of this, the Bretons proved a credulous folk and their women bought much more freely of the Doctor's toilet preparations; so, when they reached Rennes on 5th of October, Roger had fifty-four louis, tucked, literally, under his belt, as he now kept their funds, as he once had Georgina's jewels, in an elongated pouch round his waist.

On arriving in Rennes they went to the Du Guesclin, a good inn, overlooking the Champs de Mars, as they intended to do themselves well. Having reached the town by mid-morning they were in time to enjoy an excellent dejeuner, but it struck Roger that