The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

2 REYNOLDS’ WORKS ments of poor proprietors. Besides, it would have required thousands of pounds to furnish the chateau suitably, and as no rich family would think of burying themselves entirely in that seclusion, but would assuredly pass at least a moiety of the year in the gay capital, it was equally improbable that any one would incur such an enormous expense to furnish the chateau as a mere temporary residence for a few months at atime. It must likewise be observed that super- stition had lent its aid to render the old chateau all the more difficult to let, and thus, as we have said, for many long years it had remained empty. At length, some five years previous to the date which our story has reached, an elderly French gentleman, accom- panied by his daughter, and attended only by one female domestic, arrived in the neighbouring village, where they took lodgings for a few weeks. We will presently describe them more particularly. Suffice it for the present to say that Monsieur Volney — for this was the gentleman’s name — began to make inquiries about the chateau, and after some little negotiation with the lawyer, he took it. Everybody in the village was surprised, for there were several small and picturesque houses to let in the neighbourhood, any one of which would have been large enough for the accommodation of so small a family as the Volneys. But on the other hand, the chateau was to be let at a rental less than even that of either one of the houses just alluded to, and it was therefore conjectured that this might be a consideration with a man whose means were evidently exceedingly limited. Indeed, the rent asked of him for the chateau was to be little more than a mere nominal sum for the first term of seven years. Superstition, as we have already said, had given the chateau a bad name, and the lawyer to whom it belonged, naturally anxious to improve his property by amending its repute, calculated that if respectable people lived in it for a period, its former character as a haunted house would be forgotten. And then, too, Monsieur Volney undertook to make certain repairs, as well as to restore the garden; and thus, under all these circumstances, the lawyer was well enough contented with a comparatively nominal rental. On the other hand, the chateau seemed to suit Monsieur Volney’s disposition and frame of mind, and according to conjecture, his pecuniary means likewise. He was a man EORMICLIOW KS (E(0)