Note 7 — Chapter VIII

That 'Pierre Piat' was a man of character as well as of substance appears from the fact that he was charged with seeing that his wife, the cousin of a rich and charitable lady of Chauny, Marie Martine de Feure, who died in 1400, should each year receive, under the will of this good dame, 'a large piece of linen cloth whereof to make shrouds for the poor who might die in the hospital of the Hôtel-Dieu at Chauny.' Obviously there was much better stuff for the making of a true republic among these good burghers of Chauny in the fifteenth century than was to be found among the shouting mobs of the Palais-Royal in the eighteenth.