"Do you think I can now blame his avarice?" asked Louis, when his friend had finished. "Was not his only aim to enrich me, to place me in a position to gain more wealth, or to make a generous use of the possessions he left me? He imposed the hardest privations on himself that he might hoard up treasures for me!"
"Nothing surprises me on the part of a miser," returned Florestan. "They are capable of great things—and this applies to all who are a prey to that powerful and prolific passion."
"Don't exaggerate, Florestan."
"This may seem a paradox to you, but there is nothing more true. We have always been stupidly unjust to misers," went on Florestan, with growing enthusiasm. "The genius and zeal they display in inventing inconceivable, impossible economies is prodigious. Altars should be raised in their honor! Thanks to their wise, obstinate parsimony, they possess a wonderful knack of turning everything into gold; careful saving of matches, picking up stray pins, a centime carefully invested; in fact, the most trifling of economies bring in returns. And yet, the world denies the existence of alchemists, the inventors of the philosophical stone! Once more, I repeat it, do they not turn into gold what is nothing in other hands!"
"You are right enough on that score," laughed Louis.
"On that and on all other scores," rejoined Florestan, seriously. "Now, my dear fellow, follow well my comparison; it is worthy of my most brilliant days of rhetoric! Take a dry, sterile land, and dig a well into it; what happens? The smallest springs, the thinnest stream of subterranean water, the invisible tears of the earth, evaporated or lost until then without profit to anyone, will concentrate, drop by drop, into the bottom of this well; little by little the water will increase and rise, the reservoir will fill; then, if a beneficent hand spreads this salutary spray liberally, verdure and blossoms will appear as if by enchantment on that hitherto unfruitful, desolate soil. Now, Louis, is not my comparison good? Is not the miser's hidden treasure like this deep well, where, thanks to his obstinate and courageous savings, riches accumulate drop by drop, forming a reservoir from which may spring luxury, splendors, magnificence and prodigalities of all sorts?"
"My dear Florestan," said Louis, drawn from his grief by his friend's enthusiasm, "though my judgment of my father's conduct may have been influenced by filial affection, your course of reasoning on the subject of economy proves that I was not far wrong, at least."
"You are indeed right, Louis; for if we take a philosophical view of avarice, the miser is still more admirable."
"This appears less just."
"Do you not admit that, sooner or later, these riches, so laboriously amassed by the miser, will almost inevitably shower magnificences of all sorts; for the proverb says: A miserly father makes a prodigal son."