Chapter III.
On our arrival at Paris we took a furnished apartment in the Rue V——— and (to my sorrow, as events proved) near the house of Monsieur de B———, a well-known Farmer-General.[1] Three weeks went by, during which I was so entirely absorbed in my passion that I scarcely gave a thought to my family, or to the grief which my father must have felt at my absence. As, however, there was nothing approaching to debauchery in my conduct, and as Manon also behaved with every regard for propriety, the quietness of our life served to recall me gradually to a sense of duty.
- ↑ Before the Revolution, the collection of various branches of the public revenues of France was entrusted to individual speculators, known as Farmers-General (Fermiers Généraux) to whom the Government farmed out the right of levying certain taxes, such as those on salt, tobacco, etc. The people were scandalously muleted and oppressed by the majority of these men, who built up enormous fortunes by the spoliation of their unhappy victims, who were left virtually without redress. The shameful methods by which these ill-gotten gains were acquired, and the notorious debauchery and profligacy in which they were squandered, made the Farmers-General objects of popular hatred and indignation, which wreaked itself upon them without mercy when the Revolution brought about the day of reckoning.—Translator.
