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Betty, her ladyship's maid, went round informing the tradespeople that her mistress was about to contract a matrimonial alliance with a young gentleman of immense fortune; so that they might give my lady credit to any amount. Having heard the same story twice or thrice before, the tradesfolk might not give it entire credit, but their bills were paid: even to Mrs.
Moreover, we rarely struggle against the standards of fashion in our habits and arrangements; which standards, in many cases, are those of our ladies' maids, butlers, tradesfolk, and in all cases the standards of our less intelligent neighbours.
"No one has seen him," he said. "Have you asked many people?" we inquired. "Yes, scores. The sheriff, the bishop, the watchmen, the tradesfolk no one has seen or heard aught. I will go again tomorrow." "Meanwhile, do the people know what passed at the banquet last night?" "No; it has all been kept quiet," was the reply. We could do no more, and all retired to rest.
Feudalism became speedily limited to the hilly country; the plain became the property of the cities which it surrounded; the nobles turned into mere robber chieftains, then into mercenary soldiers, and finally, as the towns gained importance, they gradually descended into the cities and begged admission into the guilds of artizans and tradesfolk.
The opening would take place in a few days, and attracted not only princes, counts, and knights, exalted leaders and more modest servants of the Church, ambassadors from the cities, and other aristocrats, but also honest tradesfolk, thriving money-lenders with the citizen's cloak and the yellow cap of the Jew, vagrants and strollers of every description, who hoped to practise their various feats to the best advantage, or to fill their pockets by cheating and robbery.
A steward of my father named Tesse, who had been with him many years, disappeared all at once with fifty thousand francs due to various tradesfolk. He had written out false receipts from these people, and put them in his accounts. He was a little man, gentle, affable, and clever; who had shown some probity, and who had many friends.
Matthew Foljambe turned round with a light laugh, and gazed half contemptuously at the speaker. "Gentlemen never reckon," said he. "'Tis a mean business, only fit for tradesfolk." "You might reckon that sum, Matthew, without damage to your gentle blood. The King himself reckoneth up the troops he shall lack, and the convention-subsidy due from each man to furnish them.
Ah! these purse-proud tradesfolk, and these sparks of fashion, what do they know of all we suffer? What do they care for us? It is not for charity I ask any of them only for what my own husband has justly earned, and hardly toiled for too; and this I cannot get out of their hands. If I could, we might defy this wicked woman but now we are laid under her feet, and she will trample us to death."
The time I am telling of now is long ago. The Stowbury children, who were then little boys and girls, are now fathers and mothers doubtless a large proportion being decent tradesfolk in Stowbury still; though, in this locomotive quarter, many must have drifted elsewhere where, Heaven knows.
Admirable, too, were the fortitude and resignation of the genuine Parisian bourgeoisie, the thrifty tradesfolk and small rentiers, that class in which, to judge of its timidity when opposed to a mob, courage is not the most conspicuous virtue.
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