tive safety. Your
father raised his mortgages from time to time, as he wanted money,
and often at interest above the average market interest. You may add
considerably to your income by consolidating all these mortgages into
one at a lower percentage, and in so doing pay off this formidable
mortgagee, M. Louvier, who, I shrewdly suspect, is bent upon becoming
the proprietor of Rochebriant. Unfortunately those few portions of your
land which were but lightly charged, and, lying contiguous to small
proprietors, were coveted by them, and could be advantageously sold, are
already gone to pay the debts of Monsieur the late Marquis. There are,
however, two small farms which, bordering close on the town of S______,
I think I could dispose of for building purposes at high rates; but
these lands are covered by M. Louvier's general mortgage, and he has
refused to release them, unless the whole debt be paid. Were that debt
therefore transferred to another mortgagee, we might stipulate for their
exception, and in so doing secure a sum of more than 100,000 francs,
which you could keep in reserve for a pressing or unforeseen occasion,
and make the nucleus of a capital devoted to the gradual liquidation
of the charges on the estate. For with a little capital, Monsieur le
Marquis, your rent-roll might be very greatly increased, the forests
and orchards improved, those meadows round S_____ drained and irrigated.
Agriculture is beginning to be understood in Bretagne, and your estate
would soon double its value in the hands of a spirited capitalist. My
advice to you, therefore, is to go to Paris, employ a good 'avoue,'
practised in such branch of his profession, to negotiate the
consolidation of your mortgages upon terms that will enable you to sell
outlying portions, and so pay off the charge by instalments agreed upon;
to see if some safe company or rich individual can be found to undertake
for a term of years the management of your forests, the draining of the
S_____ meadows, the superintendence of your fisheries, etc. They, it is
true, will monopolize the profits for many years,--perhaps twenty; but
you are a young man: at the end of that time you will reenter on your
estate with a rental so improved that the mortgages, now so awful, will
seem to you comparatively trivial."

In pursuance of this advice, the young Marquis had come to Paris
fortified with a letter from M. Hebert to an 'avoue' of eminence, and
with many letters from his a