The Concordat also stipulated that former Church property acquired by buyers would belong to them "in perpetuity," thereby securing ownership of lands transferred during the French Revolution.
The same applied to émigrés. Once their ancestral estates had been bought by the new notables, they no longer belonged to them. The nouveaux riches had always feared that these old aristocrats would return to France and take back the land they had purchased. Napoleoni had taken three hundred acres of land from the new notables outside Saint-Germain to resettle them and give them somewhere to live. Naturally, the owners feared their worries were about to come true.
Who would live in a haunted house? As for why the notables had suddenly drawn close to Napoleoni, Georgiana did not know. Perhaps they feared being cursed and hoped for the Church's protection, or perhaps it was because of all the privileges he had granted.
Carriages were luxury goods. Aside from the money needed to buy one, a tax had to be paid every year. Over a carriage's ten-year lifespan, by the time it was worn out beyond use, the taxes paid would have been enough to buy a new one.
To attend Easter Mass, Paris's great and lesser notables scrambled to put on an impressive display. Yet they soon discovered that the old carriage-making workshops had mostly been destroyed during the French Revolution. Luxury was hated by the people, and that was what Rousseau's ideas expressed as well. The Revolution had raged for ten years, only to end up back where it started. What had those who died in the war sacrificed themselves for?
Montesquieu wrote of luxury trade in his books. Before the French Revolution, France's pillar industry had been luxury goods. Montesquieu had a famous saying that grated on the ear—if the