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"Yes, a million and a half awaits my successor, and even under the sod I should be tortured by the thought that my ancestral estates, for which far better men than I shed their blood, were being scattered to the winds by a worthless descendant, were dribbling away piecemeal and passing into the hands of usurers, shopkeepers, and aliens, and all through the very man who, so far from weeping at my death, will be ready to dance for joy at it.
Our town has been in existence for hundreds of years, and during the whole of that time it has not given the country one useful man not one! You have strangled in embryo everything that was alive and joyous! A town of shopkeepers, publicans, clerks, and hypocrites, an aimless, futile town, and not a soul would be the worse if it were suddenly razed to the ground."
His bailiff put up with their vagaries, until the shopkeepers came in a body to say that unless they were stopped, the market would be entirely deserted. The luckless Zemindar was staggered by the tale of oppression. He paid for every article extorted by the police, but strictly forbade the vendors to give any further credit.
For those of us that are employers of labour, how can we bear to give any man less money than he can decently live on, less leisure than his education and self-respect demand? or those of us who are workmen, how can we bear to fail in the contract we have undertaken, or to make it necessary for a foreman to go up and down spying out our mean tricks and evasions? or we the shopkeepers can we endure to lie about our wares, that we may shuffle off our losses on to some one else's shoulders? or we the public how can we bear to pay a price for a piece of goods which will help to trouble one man, to ruin another, and starve a third?
His manner combined strangely the heartiness of the seaman with the sinuous deference of the peddler. His speech was that which one hears only in the most up-country New England regions and among London small shopkeepers.
"I have never been on that block in Mulberry Street where this Albano's is. Do you happen to know any of the shopkeepers on it or near it?" "I have a cousin who has a drug-store on the corner below Albano's, on the same side of the street." "Good! Do you think he would let me use his store for a few minutes Saturday night of course without any risk to himself!" "I think I could arrange it."
As a matter of fact we have benefited them by our occupation, the shops do a roaring trade at preposterous prices, and shamefully enough the German shopkeepers are most guilty. These pot-bellied merchants don't seem to realize that they exist owing to our exertions.
On going ashore the midshipmen would sometimes ramble away to the camp, sometimes stroll through the town, and amuse themselves by chaffing the grave Turkish shopkeepers, by watching the English and French soldiers staggering along with drunken gravity, sometimes with their arms round each other's necks, or by kissing their hands airily to the veiled figures, of whom they got dim glimpses through the closely-latticed windows.
In either case the same amount of trade, which it once took hundreds of separate small shopkeepers to handle, is now handled by the one firm, under the one management. Such welding together makes for the economy in running expenses which is its first aim. But it also makes for simplicity in organization.
The great news was discussed that evening in every drawing-room; little shopkeepers, working folk, beggars, the noblesse, the merchant class the whole town, in short, was talking of the Comte d'Esgrignon's arrest on a charge of forgery. The Comte d'Esgrignon would be tried in the Assize Court; he would be condemned and branded. Most of those who cared for the honor of the family denied the fact.
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