It must be added that by the side of the merchant and working bourgeoisie--who, above all, owed their greatness to the high functions of the municipality--the parliamentary bourgeoisie had raised itself to power, and that from the fourteenth century it played a considerable part in the State, holding at several royal courts at different periods, and at last, almost hereditarily, the highest magisterial positions. The very character of these great offices of president, or of parliamentary counsel, barristers, &c., proves that the holders must have had no small amount of intellectual culture. In this way a refined taste was created among this class, which the protection of kings, princes, and lords had alone hitherto encouraged. We find, for example, the Grosliers at Lyons, the De Thous and Seguiers in Paris, regardless of their bourgeois origin, becoming judicious and zealous patrons of poets, scholars, and artists.

A description of Paris, published in the middle of the fifteenth century, describes amongst the most splendid residences of the capital the hotels of Juvénal des Ursins ([Fig. 62]), of Bureau de Dampmartin, of Guillaume Seguin, of Mille Baillet, of Martin Double, and particularly that of Jacques Duchié, situated in the Rue des Prouvaires, in which were collected at great cost collections of all kinds of arms, musical instruments, rare birds, tapestry, and works of art. In each church in Paris, and there were upwards of a hundred, the principal chapels were founded by celebrated families of the ancient bourgeoisie, who had left money for one or more masses to be said daily for the repose of the soûls of their deceased members. In the burial-grounds, and principally in that of the Innocents, the monuments of these families of Parisian bourgeoisie were of the most expensive character, and were inscribed with epitaphs in which the living vainly tried to immortalise the deeds of the deceased. Every one has heard of the celebrated tomb of Nicholas Flamel and Pernelle his wife ([Fig. 63]), the cross of Bureau, the epitaph of Yolande Bailly, who died in 1514, at the age of eighty-eight, and who "saw, or might have seen, two hundred and ninety-five children descended from her."

In fact, the religious institutions of Paris afford much curious and interesting information relative to the history of the bourgeoisie. For instance, Jean Alais, who levied a tax of one denier on each basket of fish brought to market, and thereby amassed an enormous fortune, left the whole of it at his death for the purpose of erecting a chapel called St. Agnes, which soon after became the church of St. Eustace. He further directed that, by way of expiation, his body should be thrown into the sewer which drained the offal from the market, and covered with a large stone; this sewer up to the end of the last century was still called Pont Alais.

[Fig. 63.]--Nicholas Flamel and Pernelle, his Wife, from a Painting executed at the End of the Fifteenth Century, under the Vaults of the Cemetery of the Innocents, in Paris.

Very often when citizens made gifts during their lifetime to churches or parishes, the donors reserved to themselves certain privileges which were calculated to cause the motives which had actuated them to be open to criticism. Thus, in 1304, the daughters of Nicholas Arrode, formerly provost of the merchants, presented to the church of St. Jacques-la-Boucherie the house and grounds which they inhabited, but one of them reserved the right of having a key of the church that she might go in whenever she pleased. Guillaume Haussecuel, in 1405, bought a similar right for the sum of eighteen sols parisis per annum (equal to twenty-five francs); and Alain and his wife, whose house was close to two chapels of the church, undertook not to build so as in any way to shut out the light from one of the chapels on condition that they might open a small window into the chapel, and so be enabled to hear the service without leaving their room.

[Fig. 64.]--Country Life--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in a folio Edition of Virgil, published at Lyons in 1517.

We thus see that the bourgeoisie, especially of Paris, gradually took a more prominent position in history, and became so grasping after power that it ventured, at a period which does not concern us here, to aspire to every sort of distinction, and to secure an important social standing. What had been the exception during the sixteenth century became the rule two centuries later.

We will now take a glance at the agricultural population ([Fig. 64]), who, as we have already stated, were only emancipated from serfdom at the end of the eighteenth century.

But whatever might have been formerly the civil condition of the rural population, everything leads us to suppose that there were no special changes in their private and domestic means of existence from a comparatively remote period down to almost the present time.

A small poem of the thirteenth century, entitled, "De l'Oustillement au Vilain," gives a clear though rough sketch of the domestic state of the peasantry. Strange as it may seem, it must be acknowledged that, with a few exceptions resulting from the progress of time, it would not be difficult, even at the present day, to find the exact type maintained in the country districts farthest away from the capital and large towns; at all events, they were faithfully represented at the time of the revolution of 1789.