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.