People are obliged to grind in his mill, and to leave with him a sixteenth of the flour.

The sale of a field for the sum of six hundred livres puts one hundred livres into his pocket.

A brother's inheritance reaches a brother only after he has gnawed out of it a year's income.

A score of other dues, formerly of public benefit, no longer serve but to support a useless private individual.

The peasant, then as today, is eager for gain, determined and accustomed to do and to suffer everything to save or gain a crown.
He ends by looking angrily on the turret in which are preserved the archives, the rent-roll, the detested parchments by means of which a Man of another species, favored to the detriment of the rest, a universal creditor and paid to do nothing, grazes over all the ground and feeds on all the products.