He is in hereditary and constant relation with the local public through his occupations and through his pleasures, through the chase and caring for the poor, through his farmers whom he admits at his table, and through his neighbors whom he meets in committee or in the vestry.

This shows how the old hierarchies are maintained: it is necessary, and it suffices, that they should change their military into a civil order of things and find modern employment for the chieftain of feudal times.
II.

Resident Seigniors.
Remains of the beneficent feudal spirit .-- They are not rigorous with their tenants but no longer retain the local government .-- Their isolation .-- Insignificance or mediocrity of their means of subsistence .-- Their expenditure .-- Not in a condition to remit dues .-- Sentiments of peasantry towards them.
If we go back a little way in our history we find here and there similar nobles.[1303] Such was the Duc de Saint-Simon, father of the writer, a real sovereign in his government of Blaye, a respected by the king himself.

Such was the grandfather Mirabeau, in his chateau of Mirabeau in Provence, the haughtiest, most absolute, most intractable of men, "demanding that the officers whom he appointed in his regiment should be favorably received by the king and by his ministers," tolerating the inspectors only as a matter of form, but heroic, generous, faithful, distributing the pension offered to himself among six wounded captains under his command, mediating for poor litigants in the mountain, driving off his grounds the wandering attorneys who come to practice their chicanery, "the natural protector of man even against ministers and the king.

A party of tobacco inspectors having searched his curate's house, he pursues them so energetically on horseback that they hardly escape him by fording the Durance.