This house I furnished, as one furnishes a house which he is to quit in three or four years. It was curious to observe how, from want of money or of confidence, some of the tradesmen followed their goods to my house, and required payment on delivery. I had even a sort of run upon me one morning, performed by some one who had not taken the above-mentioned precaution. The run was probably caused by some silly report. I have known a run on a country bank to originate with a farmer's declaration that such run existed; the question then being only who should run fastest. I dissipated the alarm by giving, with great tranquillity, bons on my banker: yet some tradesmen were careful to give a receipt, not for the amount of the bill, but for the bon: this, indeed, I suggested.
Seven years later, I have found the merchants of a provincial town, in which I am utterly unknown, ready to give me credit for my orders without the least symptom of suspicion or anxiety. In seven years I believe the wealth of France to have increased by one half; in seven years, the funds have risen from sixty-five to ninety-five: money might have been invested in land, seven years ago, at four and a half per cent; now, not more than three, or three and a half, can be obtained: but I am going beyond the limits of my four years residence.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] My wife has a great deal of sensibility.
[36] No, Miss, my dog will not bite you; if he were a tiger, he would lick such a beautiful hand.
CHAP. IX.
Avignon is surrounded by walls, as are most of the cities of France, and of the countries of the continent: a very great evil and inconvenience. These walls hinder the influx of fresh air from the country, and thus make the cities more unhealthy; give to those who want to enter or go out of the town the trouble of going first to a gate; and crowd and embarrass the inlets and outlets, by diminishing their number. Indeed, after sunset, this number, in order to save porters, is reduced to two; the two principal gates only, at opposite sides of the town, being attended by their guardians to watch and ward during the night. Often have I been obliged, at Avignon and at Florence, to shorten my evening walk, for the sake of arriving at the nearest gate before the Ave Maria of the evening. If I still continued without the walls, I was obliged to perform a circuit, first along a dusty road to a distant gate; and then, accompanied, it may be, by the females of my family, through the main street to my own habitation, more distant from this gate than from that by which I had gone out.
All this mischief, all this restraint, is endured, because, instead of a tax on the houses in which food is consumed, a duty is levied, at the gates, on the food itself; a duty, partial, because not paid by the inhabitants of the country; vexatious, because descending to so many and so minute objects; and expensive in its collection, because requiring perpetual superintendence. It is to be hoped the Chamber of Deputies of France will take some lessons, on the art of taxing, from the House of Commons, by whom that art has been so long and so successfully practised. Part of these tolls defray municipal expenses.