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"We cannot aid him without paying our debts twice over, and we have, in the present state of our Exchequer, scarce the means of paying them once." "You have told me news," said Lord Dalgarno, "but I will take no advantage." "Do not," said his father, "be a bold villain, since thou must be one, and seek revenge with arms, and not with the usurer's weapons."
He slept well; he comprehended divine things; he was already half a republican, when one fatal day it was the feast of the eleven thousand virgins, and they were too busy up in heaven to consider the needs of us poor hobbling, polyktonous and betempted wretches of men I went with him to the Society for the Prevention of Annoyances to the Rich, where a certain usurer's son was to read a paper on the cruelty of Spaniards to their mules.
Had the baron implied only friendly sentiments as his motives, Randal would have felt sure he was to be taken in; but the usurer's frank assurance that it would answer to him in the long-run to concede to Randal terms so advantageous, altered the case, and led our young philosopher to look at the affair with calm, contemplative eyes.
So Calverley laughed heartily. "Gad, what a jest that was! This Umfraville comes to marry Honoria. And highwaymen attack his coach! I would give L50 to have witnessed this usurer's arrival at Denton Honor in his underclothes! and to have seen his monkey-like grimaces when he learned that Honoria and I were already across the Channel!" "You robbed him, though "
Popinot's courage froze at sight of the usurer's green boxes and the monastic austerity of the room, whose atmosphere was like that of a cellar.
He told me afterwards, that, during the dialogue, he had been taking the measure of the old usurer's foot, and felt it would be a disgrace to strike so feeble a creature; but, to sit and hear his newly-found mother sneered at, and her just rights derided, was more than his patience could endure. Rising abruptly, therefore, he broke out at once in one of the plainest philippics of the sea.
Loving money, and believing in it, this 'old man' wished to secure as much of it as possible for his only child; and therefore looking keenly at the youthful admirer of a usurer's heiress, "asked him what estate his father intended to settle upon him for present maintenance, jointure, and provision for children." Mildly and not unjustly Roger calls this "an inauspicious question."
Noel had a mistress, a woman whom Clergeot himself, the friend of such creatures, considered expensive! The revelation, at such a moment, pierced the old man's heart. But he dissembled. A gesture, a look, might awaken the usurer's mistrust, and close his mouth. "That's well known," replied Tabaret in a careless tone. "Youth must have it's day. But what do you suppose the wench costs him a year?"
But the usurer's burst of democratic spleen did not surprise his precocious and acute faculty of observation. He had before remarked, that it is the persons who fawn most upon an aristocracy, and profit the most by the fawning, who are ever at heart its bitterest disparagers. Why is this?
He may lie a long in't, there's just room for an old join'd Stool besides the Bed, which one cannot call a Cabin, about the largeness of a Pantry Bin, or a Usurer's Trunk; there had been Dornex Curtains to't in the days of Yore; but they were now annihilated, and nothing left to save his Eyes from the Light, but my Landlady's Blue Apron, ty'd by the strings before the Window, in which stood a broken six-penny Looking-Glass, that shew'd as many Faces as the Scene in Henry the Eighth, which could but just stand upright, and then the Comb-Case fill'd it.
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