CHAPTER XXXIV. CONCLUSION
I had few inducements to prolong my stay at Naples. The society in which I moved had received a shock so terrible that for some time, at least, it could not hope to recover, and an air of gloom and despondency prevailed, where so lately all had worn the livery of pleasure.
I made my farewell visit, therefore, at the court, and the various embassies, and set out for Paris. This time, grown wiser by experience, I did not seek to astonish the world by any gorgeous display of my riches. I travelled with but two carriages, one of which contained my luggage; the other, a light “coupé,” I occupied alone. My route lay through Rome and Florence, across the Apennines to Milan, and thence, by the glorious scenery of the Splügen, into Switzerland; but I saw little of the varied scenes through which I journeyed. My whole thoughts were engaged upon the future.
I had once more won the great prize in the world's lottery, and I never ceased catechizing myself in what way I should exercise my power.
From what I had already observed of life, the great mistake of rich men seemed to me, their addiction to some one pursuit of pleasure, which gradually gained an undue ascendency over their minds, and exercised at last an unwonted degree of tyranny. The passion for play, the love of pictures, the taste for company-seeing, the sports of the field, and so on, ought never to be allowed any paramount place, or used as pursuits; all these things should be simply employed as means of obtaining an ascendency over other men, and of exercising that sway which is never denied to success.
Some men are your slaves because your cook is unrivalled, or your cellar incomparable: others look up to you because your equipages exhibit an elegance with which none can vie; because your thoroughbreds are larger, show more bone, and carry the highest condition. Others, again, revere you for your Vandykes and your Titians, your Rembrandts and Murillos, your illuminated missals, your antique marbles. To every section of society you can exhibit some peculiar and special temptation, which, in their blind admiration, they refer to as an attribute of yourself. Your own fault is it if they ever discover their error! The triumphs of Raphael and Velasquez shed a reflected light upon him who possesses them; and so of each excellence that wealth can purchase. You stand embodied in the exercise of your taste, and in your own person receive the adulation which greatness and genius have achieved.
To accomplish this, however, requires infinite tact and a great abrogation of self. All individuality must be merged, and a new character created, from the “disjecta membra” of many crafts and callings.
To have any one inordinate passion is to betray a weak spot in one's armor of which the cunning will soon take advantage. Such were among my meditations as I rolled along towards Paris; and so long as I journeyed alone, with no other companionship than my own thoughts, these opinions appeared sage and well reasoned; but how soon were they routed as I drove into that gorgeous capital, and saw the full tide of its pleasure-loving inhabitants as it rolled proudly past! How vain to reason farther upon the regulation of a life to which wealth set no limits! how impossible to restrain one's self within the barriers of cold prudential thought, where all was to be had for asking!
Ah, Con, your philosophy was excellent while, sitting in the corner of your coupe, you rolled along unnoticed, save by the vacant stare of some vigneron in a blue cotton nightcap, or some short-legged wench in wooden “sabots;” but now that you stand in the window of your great hotel in the Place Vendôme and see the gathering crowd which inquires, who is the illustrious arrival? your heart begins to beat quicker and fuller; you feel like a great actor, for whom the house is already impatient; nor is the curtain to remain longer down. You are scarcely an hour in Paris when your visitors began to call. Here are cards without number,—officers in high command, courtiers, ministers, and aides-de-camp of those whose rank precludes the first visit. The “place” is like a fair, with its crush of equipages, the hotel is actually besieged. Every language of Europe is heard within its “porte-cochère,” and your own chasseur is overwhelmed with questionings enough to drive him distracted.