Micheline Baulant’s compilation of eighteenth-century post-mortem inventories in the Meaux region makes it possible to measure changes in the living standard of local townsfolk and those living in the surrounding countryside. These studies show that it remained stagnant during the 17^th century but rose vigorously in the following one, thus confirming that there really was a consumer revolution in the French countryside during the 18^th century. However, this change does not seem to have coincided with an “industrious revolution” i.e. an intensification of labour created by this feverish new consumer demand. Neither the demographic context, nor adventitious local manifestations of proto-industrialisation support this theory. Indeed, the idea is contradicted by the social characteristics of those who chiefly profited from this sudden rise: bourgeois, not ploughmen, were the big winners, despite the rapid gains in wealth made by the latter. To discover the causes of this rising standard of living, we probably need to look elsewhere than to an increased workload, and rather toward the favourable economic conditions after the wars and catastrophes of earlier years, and the supply of new products induced by the revival of trade, which stimulated demand. The sudden break around 1715 appears to confirm this double hypothesis.