Ostensibly, Rigou derived about fourteen thousand francs a year from landed property actually owned by him.

But as to his amassed hoard, it was represented by an "x" which no rule of equations could evolve, just as the devil alone knew the secret schemes he plotted with Langlume.
This dangerous usurer, who proposed to live a score of years longer, had established fixed rules to work upon.

He lent nothing to a peasant who bought less than seven acres, and who could not pay one-half of the purchase-money down.

Rigou well understood the defects of the law of dispossession when applied to small holdings, and the danger both to the Public Treasury and to land-owners of the minute parcelling out of the soil.

How can you sue a peasant for the value of one row of vines when he owns only five?
The bird's-eye view of self-interest is always twenty-five years ahead of the perceptions of a legislative body.