As to ownership of the soil we see still more clearly that he once had entire possession of it.
In the district subject to his jurisdiction the public domain remains his private domain; roads, streets and open squares form a part of it; he has the right to plant trees in them and to take trees up.

In many provinces, through a pasturage rent, he obliges the inhabitants to pay for permits to pasture their cattle in the fields after the crop, and in the open common lands, (les terres vaines et vagues).

Unnavigable streams belong to him, as well as islets and accumulations formed in them and the fish that are found in them.

He has the right of the chase over the whole extent of his jurisdiction, this or that commoner being sometimes compelled to throw open to him his park enclosed by walls.
One more trait serves to complete the picture.

This head of the State, a proprietor of man and of the soil, was once a resident cultivator on his own small farm amidst others of the same class, and, by this title, he reserved to himself certain working privileges which he always retained.
Such is the right of banvin, still widely diffused, consisting of the privilege of selling his own wine, to the exclusion of all others, during thirty or forty days after gathering the crop.