United States or Sri Lanka ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Between wars the great central mass of the population in France known as the bourgeoisie who may be roughly defined as those that belong neither to the noblesse at one end nor to the industrials and peasant proprietors at the other, but have capital, however minute, invested in rentes or business, and who, beginning with the grande bourgeoisie, the haughty possessors of great inherited fortunes, continuing through the financial and commercial magnates, down to the petite bourgeoisie who keep flourishing little shops, hotels, etc. live to get the most out of life in their narrow, traditional, curiously intensive way.
"Bon soir, Monsieur le Capitaine; c'est un brave Monsieur que celui-la, et de très bonne famille! Il n'a pas de si grandes terres, que Monsieur le Patteroon, pourtant, on dit, qu'il doit avoir de jolies maisons et assez de rentes publiques! J'aime
So these charges were often increased; in time instead of a penny the habitant had to pay three-pence, six-pence, and even eight-pence, an acre; the seigneurs, as a judge put it, showed an excellent knowledge of arithmetical progression. Thus the cens et rentes began to bring in a real income. So did the lods et ventes, the tax of one-twelfth of the price of whatever land the habitant sold.
By the 1st of February a drop was recorded in many general securities, in "governments", rentes, and consols; in Berlin the bank-rate rose one per cent.; it was stated that specie was accumulating in European vaults; while up leapt futures-cotton in the Liverpool market.
"Then they think that I am ruined!" cried Father Goriot, in an agony of jealousy and desperation. "Why, I have still thirteen hundred livres a year! Mon Dieu! Poor little girl! why did she not come to me? I would have sold my rentes; she should have had some of the principal, and I would have bought a life-annuity with the rest. My good neighbor, why did not you come to tell me of her difficulty?
That very evening, at seven o'clock, Cerizet bought the business, and the money was paid over, the purchaser undertaking to pay rent for the last quarter. The next day Eve sent forty thousand francs to the Receiver-General, and bought two thousand five hundred francs of rentes in her husband's name.
Allowing for changes in the purchasing power of money during the last two hundred years, a fair idea of the burden placed on the habitant by his payment of the cens et rentes may be given by estimating it, in terms of present-day agricultural rentals, at, say, fifty cents yearly per acre.
Colbert had tried to lighten it by striking eight millions of rentes from the funded debt; but it was too deeply imbedded in the mire; the shoulder of Hercules at the wheel could not have extricated it. After Colbert was removed, times grew harder. Long before the King's death the financial distress was greater than in the wars and days of the Fronde.
Consequently none of the seals placed on the property could be broken and everything is held to secure the creditors everything, even to the personal property of the Prince and Princess de Joinville, rentes, diamonds, etc., even to a sum of 198,000 francs which belongs in her own right to the Duchess d'Orleans.
During her life with Lady Henry she had saved the whole of her own small rentes. Three hundred pounds lay ready to her hand in an investment easily realized. And she would begin to earn at once. Thérèse that should be her room the cheerful, blue-papered room with the south window. Julie felt a strange rush of feeling as she thought of it.
Word Of The Day