“Art thou not ashamed, profligate, to devour the dowries of thy daughters?”
“Hé, goodie! What need to worry! Our little girls are pretty, they will marry without dowries. And I fear me, as thou sayest, my good Nanon, we shall have nothing for the last.”
Thus teasing and cajolling the good woman, he made the usurers give him mortgages on her dowry, lending him money at the rate of fifty or a hundred per cent., and when his gambling friends came round to visit him at sundown the incorrigible scapegraces would make a carouse in the chimney corner, singing all in unison:
“We are three jolly fellows who haven’t a sou.”
There were times when my poor grandmother well-nigh despaired at seeing, one by one, the best portions of her inheritance disappear, but he would laugh at her fears:
“Why, goosey, cry about a few acres of land, they are common as blackberries,” or:
“That land, why, my dear, its returns did not pay the taxes.”
And again: “That waste there? Why it was dry as heather from our neighbours’ trees.”
He had always a retort equally prompt and light-hearted. Even of the usurers he would say:
“My faith, but it is a happy thing there are such people. Without them, how should we spendthrifts and gamblers find the needful cash at a time when money is merchandise?”