Chapter 44 Deposits in Three Lafitte Bank

However, his life is still as simple as before.He had gray hair, serious eyes, a charred complexion like a workman's, and brooding like a philosopher.He often wore a wide-brimmed hat, and a long duffel coat buttoned up to the chin.He performed his duties as mayor and lived behind closed doors after get off work.He often only talks to a few people, he avoids greetings, and when he meets someone, he salutes from the side and then quickly avoids them; he smiles to avoid talking, and uses alms to avoid smiling.The women said he was "what a good bear!" His pastime was to go for walks in the fields.

He always ate alone, reading with a book spread out in front of him.He has a nice little bookcase.He loved books, and books were a cool, sure friend.As he has money, his free time has also increased, and he seems to be using this time to improve his self-cultivation.Since his arrival at Montreuil-sur-Mer, it seemed to everyone that his conversation had become more courteous, refined, and refined every year. He likes to take a long gun with him on his walks, but doesn't use it much.Occasionally fired a shot, but never failed, which is amazing.He never killed a harmless beast, he never shot a bird.

Despite his advanced age, his physical strength was said to be incredible.He often helped people when necessary, helped a horse, pushed a cart stuck in a mud hole, and held two horns to stop a fleeing bull.When he went out, his pockets were always full of money, and when he came back, it was empty again.As he passed through a village, the children in rags ran happily to him and surrounded him like a swarm of flying insects. It was supposed that he had once lived in the fields, for he had all sorts of useful secrets to teach the farmers.He told them to spray the barns with common salt water and wash the cracks in the floors to kill the wheat-eating moths, and to hang flowering orvio weeds everywhere on the walls, on the roof, in the walls, and in the house, just like that. Can repel rice borers.He has many ways to get rid of all the grasses that parasitize the field and harm the wheat, such as wild dove grass, smut, dove grass, mountain grass, foxtail grass, etc.He put a little Barbary pig in the rabbit's nest, and its stench would deter the mice from harming the rabbit.

One day, he saw many people in the village busy pulling nettles.He looked at a pile of nettles that had been plucked and withered, and said: "Dead. It is a good thing, if we know how to use it. The leaves of nettles are a very tasty vegetable when they are young. Old nettles also have the same fiber and meridians as flax or ramie. Nettle cloth is not inferior to ramie cloth. Chopped nettles can be fed to chickens and ducks. Grinded nettles can also be fed to cattle and sheep. Nettle seeds are mixed with hay It makes the fur of animals smooth, and the root mixed with salt makes a pleasant yellow pigment. Anyway, it is always a forage that can be harvested twice. And what do nettles need? A little earth, no It needs care, not cultivation. But its seeds are ripe and fall at the same time, so it is not easy to harvest. We only need a little effort, and the nettle becomes a useful thing. If we leave it alone, it becomes a fruit. How many people in the world are like nettles." He was silent for a while, and then continued: "My friends, remember this, there are no bad weeds in the world, and there are no bad weeds in the world." There are no bad men, only bad peasants."

The children love him also because he knows how to make all kinds of interesting gadgets out of wheat straw and coconut shells. Whenever he saw that the entrance of the Catholic Church was decorated in black, he always went in.He visited funerals as others visited baptisms.Because of his very gentle disposition, widows and other misfortunes were his concern.He was often mingled with friends in mourning, families in order, priests who sighed at the coffin.He seems to be happy to immerse his thoughts in the kind of hymn full of paradise scenery.Looking up at the sky, as if wishing for the mysteries in Wuji, he listened quietly to the sour song sung at the edge of the abyss of death.

He has done many good things in secret, just as others have done evil in secret.At night, he often took advantage of people's unpreparedness, went to other people's homes, and sneaked up the stairs.A poor man returns to his shabby house to find that his door has been opened, sometimes even broken, in his absence."A thief has come!" cried the poor man. When he went in, the first thing he found was a gold coin that had been thrown on the furniture.The "thief" who had been here was none other than Uncle Madeleine. He is genial and melancholic.Ordinary common people often say: "This is a person who is rich but not proud, and this is a person who is happy but not complacent."

Some also considered him to be a mystic, and insisted that no one had ever entered his chamber, for it was a true hermit's closet, in which stood a winged hourglass and adorned with two A dead man's femur and several skulls crossed.Word of this spread so widely that one day some naughty and fashionable young women of Montreuil-sur-Mer came to his house and asked him: "Monsieur Mayor, please show us your room. People say it is a stone cave." He smiled slightly, and immediately led them to the "stone cave".They were disappointed.It was merely a room furnished with rather ugly mahogany furniture, which is always ugly, and papers worth twelve sous apiece hung on the walls.Nothing was worth their eyes, save the two old candlesticks on the mantelpiece, which seemed to be silver, "because they bear the seal of the House." It was a small-town insight.

From then on, people still say that no one has ever been to his house, saying that it is a cave where a hermit lives, a kind of sleepwalking place, a cave in the earth, and a tomb. There was also chatter that he had "large" sums in Lafayette's, and that it was a feature that he could withdraw them immediately at any time, adding that M. Madeleine might run to Lafayette one morning. Fette Bank, signed a receipt, withdrew his two or three million francs in ten minutes.In fact, as we have said, the "two to three million" has been gradually reduced to sixty-three to forty million.