First Memoir on Pauperism, First Part, Post 7

In the twelfth century, what we call the Third Estate did not yet exist.  The population was only divided into two categories: on the one hand, those who cultivate the soil without owning it; on the other, those who own land without cultivating it.

Regarding the first class of people, I imagine that, in some respects, their lot left less to be desired than that of the people of our own day.  These people, who had a larger share of liberty, status, and morality than the slaves in our colonies, nevertheless found themselves in a similar position.  Their livelihoods were for the most part assured; the interests of the master coincided with theirs on this point.  Limited in their desires, as well as in their power, not suffering in the present, tranquil in a future that did not belong to them, they enjoyed a kind of vegetative happiness whose appeal is as difficult for a highly civilized man to understand as its existence is difficult for him to deny.

The other class displays the opposite situation.  We find here, with inherited leisure, the habitual and assured use of a great surplus.  Nevertheless, I am far from believing that even in the midst of this privileged class, the search for pleasure was carried so far as is generally supposed.  Luxury can easily exist in a nation that is yet half barbaric, but comfort cannot.  Comfort presupposes a large class, all of whose members simultaneously occupy themselves with making life easier and more pleasant.  But in the time of which we speak, the number of people not comlpletely preoccupied with making a living was very small.  The existence of this class was brilliant, ostentatious, but not comfortable.  They ate with their fingers on plates of silver or engraved steel, their clothes were covered in ermine and gold, and underwear did not exist; they lived in palaces with damp walls, and they sat on richly carved wooden chairs near immense fireplaces where whole trees were consumed without spreading any warmth.  I am convinced that there is no provincial town today whose residents do not enjoy more true comforts in their homes and do not find a thousand needs that civilization has made necessary easier to satisfy than the proudest baron of the Middle Ages.