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.

[Illustration:  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.

[Illustration:  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.