“When wealth comes to a man late in life or all at once, that man, in order not to change, must most likely become a miser—that is to say, not spend much more money than he had done before; or else become a prodigal, and contract so many debts as to become poor again.”
“Oh! but what you say looks very much like a sophism, my dear philosophic friend.”
“I do not think so. Will you become a miser?”
“No, pardieu! I was one already, having nothing. Let us change.”
“Then be prodigal.”
“Still less, Mordioux! Debts terrify me. Creditors appear to me, by anticipation like those devils who turn the damned upon the gridirons, and as patience is not my dominant virtue, I am always tempted to thrash those devils.”
“You are the wisest man I know, and stand in no need of advice from any one. Great fools must they be who think they have anything to teach you. But are we not at the Rue Saint Honore?”
“Yes, dear Athos.”
“Look yonder, on the left, that small, long white house is the hotel where I lodge. You may observe that it has but two stories; I occupy the first; the other is let to an officer whose duties oblige him to be absent eight or nine months in the year,—so I am in that house as in my own home, without the expense.”
“Oh! how well you manage, Athos! What order and what liberality! They are what I wish to unite! But, of what use trying! that comes from birth, and cannot be acquired.”