No merchant could say, "I am worth so much;"--the next
post might inform him that he was a beggar. A feeling of dread and
anxiety had seized every family. The sums already lost in England
and this place were reckoned at thirty millions of pounds sterling,
and yet the crisis was far from being at an end.
Misfortunes of this kind fall particularly hard upon persons who,
like the Europeans here, have been accustomed to every kind of
comfort and luxury. No one can have any idea of the mode of life in
India. Each family has an entire palace, the rent of which amounts
to two hundred rupees (20 pounds), or more, a month. The household
is composed of from twenty-five to thirty servants; namely--two
cooks, a scullion, two water-carriers, four servants to wait at
table, four housemaids, a lamp-cleaner, and half-a-dozen seis or
grooms. Besides this, there are at least six horses, to every one
of which there is a separate groom; two coachmen, two gardeners, a
nurse and servant for each child, a lady's maid, a girl to wait on
the nurses, two tailors, two men to work the punkahs, and one
porter.
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