Madame Crevel had bequeathed a sum of three hundred thousand francs to
Baron Hulot. Her scrofulous boy Stanislas was to inherit, at his
majority, the Hotel Crevel and eighty thousand francs a year.
Among the many noble associations founded in Paris by Catholic
charity, there is one, originated by Madame de la Chanterie, for
promoting civil and religious marriages between persons who have
formed a voluntary but illicit union. Legislators, who draw large
revenues from the registration fees, and the Bourgeois dynasty, which
benefits by the notary's profits, affect to overlook the fact that
three-fourths of the poorer class cannot afford fifteen francs for the
marriage-contract. The pleaders, a sufficiently vilified body,
gratuitously defend the cases of the indigent, while the notaries have
not as yet agreed to charge nothing for the marriage-contract of the
poor. As to the revenue collectors, the whole machinery of Government
would have to be dislocated to induce the authorities to relax their
demands. The registrar's office is deaf and dumb.
Then the Church, too, receives a duty on marriages. In France the
Church depends largely on such revenues; even in the House of God it
traffics in chairs and kneeling stools in a way that offends
foreigners; though it cannot have forgotten the anger of the Saviour
who drove the money-changers out of the Temple.
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