other payments than "extension of time," for those fugitive pleasures
which eat into the fortunes of so many old men.

This luxurious life, a life like that of Bouret, cost Rigou almost
nothing. Thanks to his white slaves, he could cut and mow down and
gather in his wood, hay, and grain. To the peasant manual labor is a
small matter, especially if it serves to postpone the payment of
interest due. And so Rigou, while requiring little premiums on each
month's delay, squeezed a great deal of manual labor out of his
debtors,--positive drudgery, to which they submitted thinking they
gave little because nothing left their pockets. Rigou sometimes
obtained in this way more than the principal of a debt.

Deep as a monk, silent as a Benedictine in the throes of writing
history, sly as a priest, deceitful as all misers, carefully keeping
within the limits of the law, the man might have been Tiberius in
Rome, Richelieu under Louis XIII., or Fouche, had the ambition seized
him to go to the Convention; but, instead of all that, Rigou had the
common sense to remain a Lucullus without ostentation, in other words,
a parsimonious voluptuary. To occupy his mind he indulged a hatred
manufactured out of the whole cloth. He harassed the Comte de
Montcornet. He worked the peasants like puppets by hidden wires, the
handling of which amused him as though it were a game of chess where
the pawns were alive, the knights caracoled, the bishops, like
Fourchon, gabbled, the feudal castles shone in the sun, and the queen
maliciously checkmated the king. Every day, when he got out of bed and
saw from his window the proud towers of Les Aigues, the chimneys of
the pavilions, and the noble gates, he said to himself: "They shall
fall! I'll dry up the brooks, I'll chop down the woods." But he had
two victims in mind, a chief one and a lesser one. Though he meditated