O happy Bob Maurice! O happy sexagenarian!
"O me fortunatum, mea si bona nôrim!" (What would Père Brossard say at this? he would give me a twisted pinch on the arm—and serve me right!)
I'm very glad I've been successful, though it's not a very high achievement to make a very large fortune by buying and selling that which put into a man's mouth is said to steal away his brains!
But it does better things than this. It reconciles and solves and resolves mental discords, like music. It makes music for people who have no ear—and there are so many of these in the world that I'm a millionaire, and Franz Schubert died a pauper. So I prefer to drink beer—as he did; and I never miss a Monday Pop if I can help it.
I have done better things, too. I have helped to govern my country and make its laws; but it all came out of wine to begin with—all from learning how to buy and sell. We're a nation of shopkeepers, although the French keep better shops than ours, and more of them.
I'm glad I'm successful because of Barty, although success, which brings the world to our feet, does not always endear us to the friend of our bosom. If I had been a failure Barty would have stuck to me like a brick, I feel sure, instead of my sticking to him like a leech! And the sight of his success might have soured me—that eternal chorus of praise, that perpetual feast of pudding in which I should have had no part but to take my share as a mere guest, and listen and look on and applaud, and wish I'd never been born!
As it is, I listened and looked on and clapped my hands with as much pride and pleasure as if Barty had been my son—and my share of the pudding never stuck in my throat!
I should have been always on the watch to take him down a peg when he was pleased with himself—to hold him cheap and overpraise some duffer in his hearing—so that I might save my own self‑esteem; to pay him bad little left‑handed compliments, him and his, whenever I was out of humor; and I should have been always out of humor, having failed in life.
And then I should have gone home wretched—for I have a conscience—and woke up in the middle of the night and thought of Barty; and what a kind, genial, jolly, large‑minded, and generous‑hearted old chap he was and always had been—and buried my face in my pillow, and muttered:
"Ach! what a poor, mean, jealous beast I am—un fruit sec! un malheureux raté!"