From Franklin Ford (1953), Robe and Sword (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), p. vii: There is a passage in La Bruyere which expresses as concisely as I know the familiar historical impression of the French nobility under Louis XIV: "A nobleman, if he lives at home in his province, lives free but without substance; if he lives at court, he is taken care of but enslaved." There, in miniature, is the picture of a class of subjects reduced to indigence by economic developments beyond their powers of adaptation or broken to sycophancy by the cardinal and the king who had dominated the Grand Siecle...
Posted by DeLong at May 14, 2003 05:40 PM | TrackBack