Bishop Isoard…narrates a conversation he heard one month earlier between notre Monsieur and his farmer. The latter said to him: “Last December, it was three hundred forty-seven years that we have been with Monsieur.” And the former replied, “We, we were here before you. I don’t know for sure how many years… all I know is that it is more than six hundred years.”
Msgr. Henri Delassus, L’Esprit Familiale (Paris: Desclée, De Brouwer, 1910), 108. (Nobility.org translation.)
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 425