The detailed probate records collected from the archives show unambiguously that many rentiers in the interwar years did not reduce expenses sufficiently rapidly to compensate for the shocks to their fortunes and income during the war and in the decade that followed, so that they eventually had to eat into their capital to finance current expenditures. Hence they bequeathed to the next generation fortunes significantly smaller than those they had inherited, and the previous social equilibrium could no longer be sustained. The Parisian data are particularly eloquent on this point. For example,
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