Pistole as money

Meaning

Lemma.

A historical monetary name retained in Longuemare’s account of the pension paid to him by the Assembly. His hundred pistoles are a stated amount of money, not the paid prison accommodation called à la pistole later in the novel. No modern purchasing-power equivalent is implied. The priest speaks of living on this pension in a stable emptied of horses for military service, placing a monetary entitlement beside makeshift shelter.