“Oh! come, Rip,” I protested, “fen fooling a fellow about a thing like this.”
“But I'm not fooling. I never was more in earnest in all my life. It's as plain as the nose on your face. There are no two ways about it. Ask anybody.”
“But—but then—but then I'm rich—rich!”
“That's what you are, unless, by a properly executed will, your grandmother disinherited you.”
“But I tell you I know she never did that. It stands to reason that she didn't.”
“Well, sir, then it only remains for you to claim your rights at the hands of your amiable uncle, and to open a bank account.”
“O my goodness! O, Rip! Oh! it's impossible. It's too—too glorious to be true,” I cried, as a realizing sense of my position rushed upon me. My heart was pounding like a hammer against my ribs; my breath was coming short and swift; my brain was in a whirl. I felt dazzled and bewildered; and yet I felt a wondrous, thrilling joy, a great glow of exultation, that sent me dancing around the shop like a maniac, wringing my hands in self-congratulation.
I was rich! Only think, I was rich! I could take my proper station now, and cut my proper figure in the world. Good-by, patched trousers, good-by, shop, good-by all such low, humiliating things. Welcome opulence, position, purple and fine linen. Hurrah! I would engage a passage upon the very first, the very fastest steamer, and sail away to that brilliant, courtly country where my Uncle Florimond, resplendent in the trappings of nobility, awaited me with open arms, there to live in the state and fashion that would become the nephew of a marquis. I would burn my plebeian ships behind me. I would do this, that, and the other wonderful thing. I saw it all in a single radiant glance.
But what you see more plainly than anything else, I did not see at all.
I did not see that I was accepting my good fortune in an altogether wrong and selfish spirit. I did not see that my first thought in my prosperity ought to have been for those who had stood by me in my adversity. I did not see that my first impulse ought to have been now to make up in some wise to my friend and benefactor, Mr. Finkelstein, for his great goodness and kindness to me. I did not see that I was an arrant little snob, an ungrateful little coxcomb. A mixture of false shame and evil pride had puffed me up like so much inflammable gas, which—Ripley having unwittingly applied the spark to it—had now burst into flame.