There was a limit, however, beyond even the extortions of the tax-collector, the custom-house officer, the gauger, could not proceed; they could not seize where nothing remained to be taken. Yet the public exchequer was empty, the public revenues were exhausted, and still the cry for gold, more gold, was as importunate at Versailles as that for bread, more bread, among the populace. Paris-Duvernoy, one of the ministers of Louis XV., seeing no other way out of the pressing difficulty, at last bethought him of putting a tax, the Cinquantième, on all classes without distinction. This tax raised a perfect storm of indignation among the nobility and clergy. Who so daring as to lay a sacrilegious hand on the riches of the Church! The Duke was forced to resign, and a proclamation issued to the effect that all ecclesiastical possessions should now and in perpetuity remain exempt from taxes and imposts! The author of this proclamation was that identical Cardinal Fleury, the confidant of the King, to whom Henri Saint Simon had described the appalling poverty of the realm.
Such was the conduct of the Church at the approach of an imminent national crisis, such the rapacity of a priesthood instituted in the name of Christ, the very core of whose teaching had been not to lay up riches for yourself, but charity, but the sharing in common of the common fruits of the earth. If ever the absolute divorce between theory and practice had the effect of producing in a nation an army of cynics, sceptics, and scoffers, then this effect must have been produced in France at the beginning of the eighteenth century. But while the extravagances and licentiousness of the higher clergy had realised a fabulous extent, the curés and village priests were left so badly that they often de-
