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The lords of Chantenac were as noble, as proud, and as poor as most great lords of Bearn. Their lineage was long, their rent-rolls short. And the last marquis had suffered more from this dual complaint than any of his forbears, and he had not at all improved matters by a certain habit of gaming contracted in youth. The chateau bore abundant signs of it.
Reeves," said he, "that I will give you carte blanche as to settlements. I will lay before you, or before any of Miss Byron's friends, my rent-rolls. There never was a better conditioned estate. She shall live in town, or in the country, as she thinks fit." On a message that tea was near ready, I went down.
In fashionable life, it will be my cousin Sir Ralph, my father the Earl, and my great uncle the Duke; the living relatives and the departed fathers; the halls of her family, their rent-rolls, or their graves, will afford abundant materials for any conversation she may have to furnish.
His wife flooded him too persistently, perhaps, with cousins and grandees of the duller sort, whose ideas seemed to him as raw as their rent-rolls were large till he rebelled.
Often landlords who want to build a new house or send a son to England or buy a new motor simply levy an extra anna in the rupee on their rent-rolls which the wretched tenants dare not refuse to pay. As in many other matters, the ancient institution of caste, which is still the corner-stone of the whole Indian social structure, introduces yet another disturbing factor.
Without it, how should the water be got out of a draw-well? In what case would tabellions, notaries, copists, makers of counterpanes, writers, clerks, secretaries, scriveners, and such-like persons be without it? Were it not for it, what would become of the toll-rates and rent-rolls? Would not the noble art of printing perish without it? Whereof could the chassis or paper-windows be made?
The blow was struck; the aristocracy obtained all they wished, and they subscribed to a twelvemonths' bill, which levied twenty per cent on all the rent-rolls of the country.
How hard it is to convince youth, that sees all the world of the future before it, and covers that future with golden palaces, of the inequalities of life! In my fantastic and sublime romance I looked out into that Great Beyond, saw myself orator, statesman, minister, ambassador, Heaven knows what, laying laurels, which I mistook for rent-rolls, at Fanny's feet.
The great capitalists, farmers of the taxes, and jurymen, showed no special desire, after the severe shipwreck which had befallen the constitutional party in Italy, to entrust themselves farther to the same pilots; capital came once more to the light, and "the rich lords resorted again to their daily task of writing their rent-rolls."
These are the parchments and title-deeds of your eight baronies, with the seals of eleven kings, from Baldret, King of Kent, to James the Sixth of Scotland, and first of England and Scotland united. Here are your letters of precedence. Here are your rent-rolls, and titles and descriptions of your fiefs, freeholds, dependencies, lands, and domains.
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