I owe it at least the half of what I possess. The enormity of this legislative and executive power made me bless myself. What would it be if that power which presides over "the essential order of society," were to take the whole of my little estate? The one is still more divine than the other.
The comptroller-general knows that I used to pay in all but twelve livres; that even this was a heavy burden on me, and that I should have sunk under it, if God had not given me the talent of making wicker baskets, which helped to carry me through my trials. But how should I, on a sudden, be able to give the king twenty crowns?
The new ministers also said in their preamble that it was not fit to tax anything but the land, because everything arises from the land, even rain itself, and consequently that nothing was properly liable to taxation but the fruits of the land.
During the last war one of their collectors came to my house, and demanded of me, for my quota, three measures of corn and a sack of beans, the whole worth twenty crowns, to maintain the war—of which I never knew the reason, having only heard it said that there was nothing to be got by it for our country, and a great deal to lose. As I had not at that time either corn, or beans, or money, the legislative and executive power had me dragged to prison; and the war went on as well as it could.
On my release from the dungeon, being nothing but skin and bone, whom should I meet but a jolly
