with port: and professional insinuations of the modified nature of
this London luxury were employed to set the sneerers of the village
against me and mine. Our four footmen had been instantly discovered by
the eye of an opulent neighbour; and the competition was at once
laughed at as folly, and resented as an insult. Every hour saw some of
my old friends falling away from me. An unlucky cold, which seized one
of my daughters a week before my return, had cut away my twenty years'
acquaintance, the village-doctor, from my cause; for the illness of an
"heiress" was not to be cured by less than the first medical authority
of the province. The supreme Aesculapius was accordingly called in;
and his humbler brother swore, in the bitterness of his soul, that he
would never forget the affront on this side of death's door. The
inevitable increase of dignity which communicated itself to the
manners of my whole household did the rest; and if my wife held her
head high, never was pride more peevishly retorted. Like the
performers in a pillory, we seemed to have been elevated only for the
benefit of a general pelting.

These were the women's share of the mischief; but I was not long without
administering in person to our unpopularity. The report of my fortune
had, as usual, been enormously exaggerated; and every man who had a debt
to pay, or a purchase to make, conceived himself "bound to apply first
to his old and excellent friend, to whom the accommodation for a month
or two must be such a trifle." If I had listened to a tenth of those
compliments, "their old and excellent friend" would have only preceded
them to a jail. In some instances I complied, and so far only showed my
folly; for who loves his creditor? My refusal of course increased the
host of my enemies; and I was pronounced purse-proud, beggarly, and
unworthy of the notice of the "true gentlemen, who knew how to spend
their money."