on he product of the soil, a number of curates have a fixed rate and no parsonage; their church goes to ruin and the beneficiary gives nothing to the poor.
"At Saint-Laurent, in Normandy, the curacy is worth not more than 400 livres, which the curate shares with an obitier,[1429] and there are 500 inhabitants, three quarters of whom receive alms." As the repairs on a parsonage or on a church are usually at the expense of a seignior or of a beneficiary often far off, and in debt or indifferent, it sometimes happens that the priest does not know where to lodge, or to say mass.

"I arrived," says a curate of the Touraine, "in the month of June, 1788.

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The parsonage would resemble a hideous cave were it not open to all the winds and the frosts.