"I admit that prodigality is the usual dispenser of these long-hoarded treasures; but where do you see philanthropy in that?"
"Where do I see it? Why, in everything! Do not the consequences of luxury and magnificence bring ease and comfort to the hundreds of families that weave silks and laces, chisel gold and silver, carve precious stones, build palaces, sculpture the ebony of furniture, varnish carriages, breed thoroughbred horses, and cultivate rare flowers? Have not artists, architects, musicians, singers, danseuses, all that is art, pleasure, poetry, enchantment, a large share of the gold shower that produces these wonders? And does not this gold shower spring from that magical reservoir so slowly and perseveringly filled by the miser? Therefore, without the miser, we should have no reservoir, no gold shower, and none of the marvels which this sparkling, beneficent dew alone can produce—Now, let us look at the miser from a catholic point of view—"
"Look at the miser from a catholic point of view!" echoed Louis, in astonishment.
"That is exactly where he is truly admirable," rejoined Saint-Herem, imperturbably.
"I confess that this theory seems to me difficult to sustain."
"On the contrary, it is most simple. Is not abnegation one of the greatest virtues known?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Well, my dear Louis, I defy you to cite me a monastic order whose members practice the renouncement of worldly pleasures more absolutely and sincerely than the miser. And his renouncement is truly the more heroic, because he has within his grasp all the delights and enchantments of soul, mind and senses, and possesses the incredible courage to refuse them all. There is strength, there is the triumph of an energetic will."
"But you must take into consideration that avarice almost invariably stifles all other passions, and the renunciation is less difficult to a miser than to another. In depriving himself, he satisfies his predominant passion."
"Just so! And is not a power a great passion that will lead to such renunciation? But where the miser is truly sublime, is in his disinterestedness."