By this incident I do not mean to suggest that there are not honorable men in the legal profession. Most of them are men of the highest honor, as are most business men, most persons of consequence in every department of life. But you don't look for character in the proprietors, servants, customers and hangers-on of dives. No more ought you to look for honor among any of the people that have to do with the big gilded dive of the dollarocracy. They are there to gamble, and to prostitute themselves. The fact that they look like gentlemen and have the manners and the language of gentlemen ought to deceive nobody but the callow chaps of the sort that believes the swell gambler is “an honest fellow” and a “perfect gentleman otherwise,” because he wears a dress suit in the evening and is a judge of books and pictures. Lawyers are the doorkeepers and the messengers of the big dive; and these lawyers, though they stand the highest and get the biggest fees, are just what you would expect human beings to be who expose themselves to such temptations, and yield whenever they get an opportunity, as eager and as compliant as a cocotte.
My lawyers had sold me out; I, fool that I was, had not guarded the only weak plate in my armor against my companions—the plate over my back, to shed assassin thrusts. Roebuck and Langdon between them owned the governor; he owned the Canal Commission; my canal, which gave me access to tide-water for the product of my Manasquale mines, was as good as closed. I no longer had the whip-hand in National Coal. The others could sell me out and take two-thirds of my fortune, whenever they liked—for of what use were my mines with no outlet now to any market, except the outlets the coal crowd owned?
As soon as I had thought the situation out in all its bearings, I realized that there was no escape for me now, that whatever chance to escape I might have had was closed by my uncovering to Saxe and kicking him. But I did not regret; it was worth the money it would cost me. Besides, I thought I saw how I could later on turn it to good account. A sensible man never makes fatal errors. Whatever he does is at least experience, and can also be used to advantage. If Napoleon hadn't been half dead at Waterloo, I don't doubt he would have used its disaster as a means to a greater victory.
Was I downcast by the discovery that those bandits had me apparently at their mercy? Not a bit. Never in my life have I been downcast over money matters more than a few minutes. Why should I be? Why should any man be who has made himself all that he is? As long as his brain is sound, his capital is unimpaired. When I walked into Mowbray Langdon's office, I was like a thoroughbred exercising on a clear frosty morning; and my smile was as fresh as the flower in my buttonhole. I thrust out my hand at him. “I congratulate you,” said I.
He took the proffered hand with a questioning look.
“On what?” said he. It is hard to tell from his face what is going on in his head, but I think I guessed right when I decided that Saxe hadn't yet warned him.
“I have just found out from Saxe,” I pursued, “about the Canal Bill.”
“What Canal Bill?” he asked.
“That puzzled look was a mistake, Langdon,” said I, laughing at him. “When you don't know anything about a matter, you look merely blank. You overdid it; you've given yourself away.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “As you please,” said he. As you please was his favorite expression; a stereotyped irony, for in dealing with him, things were never as you pleased, but always as he pleased.