1 88 Travels in France 



well as from notes taken, may be above 3000 arpents or acres, 

 lying all contiguous and near the chateau. The outgoings for 

 those taxes paid by the landlord; repairs, guard dechasse, game- 

 keeper (for here are all the seigneural rights, hmit justice, etc.), 

 steward, expenses on wine, etc., amount to about 4400 livres 

 (£192 los.). It yields therefore net something more than 8000 

 livres (£350) a year. The price asked is 300,000 livres (£13,125) ; 

 but for this price is given in the furniture complete of the 

 chateau, all the timber, amounting, by valuation of oak only, 

 to 40,000 livres (£1750), and all the cattle on the estate, viz. 

 1000 sheep, 60 cows, 72 oxen, 9 mares, and many hogs. Know- 

 ing, as I did, that I could, on the security of this estate, borrow 

 the whole of the purchase-money, I withstood no trifling tempta- 

 tion when I turned my back on it. The finest climate in France, 

 perhaps in Europe ; a beautiful and healthy country ; excellent 

 roads; a navigation to Paris; wine, game, fish, and everything 

 that ever appears on a table, except the produce of the tropics ; 

 a good house, a fine garden, ready markets for every sort of 

 produce; and, above all the rest, 3000 acres of enclosed land, 

 capable in a very little time of being, without expense, quad- 

 rupled in its produce, altogether formed a picture sufficient to 

 tempt a man who had been five-and-twenty years in the constant 

 practice of husbandry adapted to this soil. But the state of 

 government — the possibility that the leaders of the Paris 

 democracy might in their wisdom abolish property as well as 

 rank; and that in buying an estate I might be purchasing my 

 share in a civil war— deterred me from engaging at present, and 

 induced me only to request that the marquis would give me the 

 refusal of it before he sold it to anybody else. When I have to 

 connect with a person for a purchase, I shall wish to deal with 

 such a one as the Marquis de Goutte. He has a physiognomy 

 that pleases me; the ease and politeness of his nation is mixed 

 with great probity and honour ; and is not rendered less amiable 

 by an appearance of dignity that flows from an ancient and 

 respectable family. To me he seems a man in whom one might, 

 in any transaction, place implicit confidence. I could have 

 spent a month in the Bourbonnois, looking at estates to be sold; 

 adjoining to that of M. de Goutte's is another of 270,000 livres' 

 purchase, Ballain; Monsieur I'Abbe Barnt having made an 

 appointment with the proprietor, carried me in the afternoon 

 to see the chateau and a part of the lands ; all the country is the 

 same soil and in the same management. It consists of eight 

 farms, stocked with cattle and sheep by the landlords ; and here 



