Vous was used by everybody, not so long ago. Not just servants to masters, but also attendants in stores (still common), two people who (as matt says) simply don’t know each other well, etc.; it would be used in any situation where an American with Southern manners would use “sir” or “madam”.
The last time I took French in a formal setting, I realized that, since the year I spent using it for real I only got to use toi for any length of time with one person (the agent for my rented flat, who was a woman about my age), I have serious problems conjugating the second person singular form of verbs. My informal encounters in that period (2006, Three-Borders area) moved very rapidly to “uhm… pardonnez-moi, soyez vous espagnol/e?” “¡Leche, sí!”
The traditional English version is “Are you sleeping x2 / Brother John?” So even though Jacques is not “Jack,” the monk of celebrated somnulence is more Jack than James in English.
I’ve always rather liked the usage of se coucher to describe the setting of the sun. I remember our French teacher at school telling us that we could remember the correct verb because it was “the sun going to bed”.
Yes, but it seems to me that the masters would also call the servants “vous.” Certainly the king would call non-royalty “vous.” I could be wrong, though.
(There were even times when you would call your parents “vous.” I think pupils would generally call their teachers “vous” and be called “tu” in return, but that had more to do with their being children than hierarchical inferiors.)
