VLVL The Sisterhood: (VL is about WORK)

[Terrance]

Afterwards, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down, I
know not which, and the inscription disappeared.  For it is
thus that people have been in the habit of proceeding with
the marvelous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two
hundred years.  Mutilations come to them from every quarter,
from within as well as from without.  The priest whitewashes
them, the archdeacon scrapes them down; then the
populace arrives and demolishes them.

Every city during the Middle Ages, and every city in France
down to the time of Louis XII. had its places of asylum.
These sanctuaries, in the midst of the deluge of penal and
barbarous jurisdictions which inundated the city, were a
species of islands which rose above the level of human justice.
Every criminal who landed there was safe.  There were in
every suburb almost as many places of asylum as gallows.
It was the abuse of impunity by the side of the abuse of
punishment; two bad things which strove to correct each
other.  The palaces of the king, the hotels of the princes, and
especially churches, possessed the right of asylum.  Sometimes
a whole city which stood in need of being repeopled was
temporarily created a place of refuge.  Louis XI. made
all Paris a refuge in 1467.

His foot once within the asylum, the criminal was sacred;
but he must beware of leaving it; one step outside the sanctuary,
and he fell back into the flood. 

"You are ruining us!" he cried, casting his hollow eyes
over the scroll.  "What is all this?  What need have we of so
prodigious a household?  Two chaplains at ten livres a month
each, and, a chapel clerk at one hundred sols!  A valet-de-
chambre at ninety livres a year.  Four head cooks at six score
livres a year each!  A spit-cook, an herb-cook, a sauce-cook,
a butler, two sumpter-horse lackeys, at ten livres a month
each!  Two scullions at eight livres!  A groom of the stables
and his two aids at four and twenty livres a month!  A porter,
a pastry-cook, a baker, two carters, each sixty livres a year!
And the farrier six score livres!  And the master of the
chamber of our funds, twelve hundred livres!  And the
comptroller five hundred.  And how do I know what else?
'Tis ruinous.  The wages of our servants are putting France
to the pillage! 

THE RETREAT IN WHICH MONSIEUR LOUIS OF FRANCE SAYS HIS PRAYERS