The young Monsieur de Soulas could not dispense with having a "tiger." This "tiger" was the son of one of his tenants, a sturdy little servant aged fourteen, named Babylas. The lion had dressed his tiger very well: a short coat of iron-gray cloth, tightened by a varnished leather belt, navy blue panne breeches, a red waistcoat, varnished boots with cuffs, a round hat with a black band, and yellow buttons bearing the Soulas arms. Amédée gave this boy white cotton gloves, laundry service, and thirty-six francs per month, on the condition that he fed himself, which seemed monstrous to the working girls of Besançon: four hundred and twenty francs for a fifteen-year-old child, not counting gifts! The gifts consisted of the sale of old clothes, a tip when Soulas traded one of his two horses, and the sale of manure. The two horses, managed with sordid economy, cost, on average, eight hundred francs per year. The bill for supplies from Paris in perfumery, ties, jewelry, pots of varnish, and clothes amounted to twelve hundred francs. If you add up the groom or "tiger," horses, superlative attire, and rent of six hundred francs, you get a total of three thousand francs. Now, the father of the young Monsieur de Soulas had not left him more than four thousand francs in income from some rather meager farms that required maintenance, and whose maintenance added a certain uncertainty to the income. Barely three francs a day remained for the lion for his life, his pocket, and his gambling.
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Albert Savarus Comments