The country doctor / by Honoré de Balzac.

  • Honoré de Balzac
Date:
[1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The country doctor / by Honoré de Balzac. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    working much. As soon as the rogue had secured a few crowns for himself, his intelligence developed; he followed the movement which I had communicated to this poor canton, seeking to profit by it to enrich himself. In eight years he has made a large for- tune, large for this canton. He has perhaps at present some forty thousand francs. But I will give you one chance in a thousand to guess by what means he has been able to acquire this sum. He is a usurer, so thorough-going a usurer, and a usurer by a combination so well-founded upon the interests of all the inhabitants of the canton, that I should lose my time if I undertook to disabuse them con- cerning the advantages which they believe they draw from their relations with Taboureau. When this devil of a man saw everybody cultivating his land, he went about the neighborhood to purchase grain to furnish the poor with the seed which it would be necessary for them to have. Here, as every- where, the peasants, and even some farmers, have not enough money to pay for their seed. To some of them, Master Taboureau lent a sack of barley for which they returned to him a sack of rye after the harvest; to others, a setier—about twelve bushels— of grain for a sack of flour. To-day, my man has extended this singular species of commerce through- out the department. If nothing stops him on the way, he will gain, perhaps, a million. “Well, my dear monsieur, the workman Tabou- reau, an honest fellow, obliging, good-natured, would give a helping hand to whoever asked him; but, in
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