[Illustration:  Fig. 62.—­Hotel des Ursins, Paris, built during the Fourteenth Century, restored in the Sixteenth, and now destroyed.—­State of the North Front at the End of the last Century.]

The manner in which the author concludes his instruction proves his kindness of heart, as well as his benevolence:  “If one of your servants fall sick, it is your duty, setting everything else aside, to see to his being cured.”

It was thus that a bourgeois of the fifteenth century expressed himself; and as it is clear that he could only have been inspired to dictate his theoretical teachings by the practical experience which he must have gained for the most part among the middle class to which he belonged, we must conclude that in those days the bourgeoisie possessed considerable knowledge of moral dignity and social propriety.

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 Juvenal des Ursins (Fig. 62), of Bureau de Dampmartin, of Guillaume Seguin, of Mille Baillet, of Martin Double, and particularly that of Jacques Duchie, 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 souls 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.”