172 Travels in France 



agitation; at one of the little towns I passed I was questioned 

 for not having a cockade of the tiers etat. They said it was 

 ordained by the tiers, and. if I was not a seigneur, I ought to 

 obey. Bui suppose I am a seigneur, what then, my friends ? — 

 What then? they replied sternly, why, be hanged; for that 

 most likely is what you deserve. It was plain this was no 

 moment for joking, the boys and girls began to gather, whose 

 assembling has everywhere been the preliminaries of mischief: 

 and if I had not declared myself an Englishman, and ignorant 

 of the ordinance, I had not escaped very well. I immediately 

 bought a cockade, but the hussy pinned it into my hat so 

 loosely that before I got to Lisle it blew into the river and I 

 was again in the same danger. My assertion of being English 

 would not do. I was a seigneur, perhaps in disguise, and 

 without doubt a great rogue. At this moment a priest came 

 into the street with a letter in his hand : the people immediately 

 collected around him, and he then read aloud a detail from 

 Befort, giving an account of M. Necker's passing, with some 

 general features of news from Paris, and assurances that the 

 condition of the people would be improved. When he had 

 finished, he exhorted them to abstain from all violence; and 

 assured them they must not indulge themselves with any ideas 

 of impositions being abolished; which he touched on as if he 

 knew that they had got such notions. When he retired, they 

 again surrounded me, who had attended to the letter like others ; 

 were very menacing in their manner; and expressed many 

 suspicions : I did not like m}' situation at all, especially on hear- 

 ing one of them say that I ought to be secured till somebody 

 would give an account of me. I was on the steps of the inn 

 and begged they would permit me a few words ; I assured them 

 that I was an English traveller, and to prove it I desired to 

 explain to them a circumstance in English taxation which 

 would be a satisfactory comment on what Monsieur I'Abbe had 

 told them, to the purport of which I could not agree. He had 

 asserted that the impositions must be paid as heretofore: that 

 the impositions must be paid was certain, but not as heretofore, 

 as they might be paid as they were in England. Gentlemen, we 

 have a great number of taxes in England which you know- 

 nothing of in France ; but the tiers etat. the poor, do not pay them ; 

 they are laid on the rich; every window in a man's house pays, 

 but if he has no more than six windows he pays nothing; a 

 seigneur, with a great estate, pays the vingtiemes and tailles, but 

 the little proprietor of a garden pays nothing ; the rich for their 



