This annoying old man had neither wife, child, nephew, or niece. He
bullied his servant-of-all-work too much to make her a victim; for she
escaped all contact with her master by doing her work and keeping out
of his way. His appetite for tyranny was thus balked; and to satisfy
it in some way he patiently studied the laws relating to rentals and
party-walls; he fathomed the jurisprudence which regulates the
dwellings of Paris in an infinite number of petty questions as to
tenants, abutters, liabilities, taxes, repairs, sweepings, decorations
for the Fete-Dieu, waste-pipes, lighting, projections over the public
way, and the neighborhood of unhealthy buildings. His means, his
strength, in fact his whole mind was spent in keeping his proprietary
rights on a complete war-footing. He had made it an amusement, and the
amusement had become a monomania. He was fond of protecting citizens
against the encroachment of illegal proceedings; but finding such
subjects of complaint rare, he had finally turned upon his own
tenants. A tenant became his enemy, his inferior, his subject, his
vassal; he laid claim to his subservience, and looked upon any man as
a brute who passed him on the stairway without speaking. He wrote out
his bills for rent himself, and sent them on the morning of the day
they fell due. The debtor who was behindhand in his payment received a
legal notice to quit at an appointed time. Then followed seizures,
law-suits, costs, and the whole judicial array set in motion with the
rapidity of what the head's-man calls the "mechanism." Molineux
granted neither grace nor time; his heart was a callus in the
direction of a lease.

"I will lend you the money if you want it," he would say to a man he
thought solvent, "but pay my rent; all delays carry with them a loss
of interest for which the law does not indemnify us."