Indignantly I replied: "Go to the devil--you have not money enough--there is not money enough in the universe--to buy an hour of my season's loaf."
A year later I found him occupying with his family a splendid mansion up the Hudson, with a great stable of carriages and horses, living like a country gentleman, going to the World office about time for luncheon and coming away in the early afternoon. I passed a week-end with him. To me it seemed the precursor of ruin. His second payment was yet to be made. Had I been in his place I would have been taking my meals in an adjacent hotel, sleeping on a cot in one of the editorial rooms and working fifteen hours out of the twenty-four. To me it seemed dollars to doughnuts that he would break down and go to smash. But he did not--another case of destiny.
I was abiding with my family at Monte Carlo, when in his floating palace, the Liberty, he came into the harbor of Mentone. Then he bought a shore palace at Cap Martin. That season, and the next two or three seasons, we made voyages together from one end to the other of the Mediterranean, visiting the islands, especially Corsica and Elba, shrines of Napoleon whom he greatly admired.
He was a model host. He had surrounded himself with every luxury, including some agreeable retainers, and lived like a prince aboard. His blindness had already overtaken him. Other physical ailments assailed him. But no word of complaint escaped his lips and he rarely failed to sit at the head of his table. It was both splendid and pitiful.
Absolute authority made Pulitzer a tyrant. He regarded his newspaper ownership as an autocracy. There was nothing gentle in his domination, nor, I might say, generous either. He seriously lacked the sense of humor, and even among his familiars could never take a joke. His love of money was by no means inordinate. He spent it freely though not wastefully or joyously, for the possession of it rather flattered his vanity than made occasion for pleasure. Ability of varying kinds and degrees he had, a veritable genius for journalism and a real capacity for affection. He held his friends at good account and liked to have them about him. During the early days of his success he was disposed to overindulgence, not to say conviviality. He was fond of Rhine wines and an excellent judge of them, keeping a varied assortment always at hand. Once, upon the Liberty, he observed that I preferred a certain vintage. "You like this wine?" he said inquiringly. I assented, and he said, "I have a lot of it at home, and when I get back I will send you some." I had quite forgotten when, many months after, there came to me a crate containing enough to last me a life-time.
He had a retentive memory and rarely forgot anything. I could recall many pleasurable incidents of our prolonged and varied intimacy. We were one day wandering about the Montmartre region of Paris when we came into a hole-in-the-wall where they were playing a piece called "Les Brigands." It was melodrama to the very marrow of the bones of the Apaches that gathered and glared about. In those days, the "indemnity" paid and the "military occupation" withdrawn, everything French pre-figured hatred of the German, and be sure "Les Brigands" made the most of this; each "brigand" a beer-guzzling Teuton; each hero a dare-devil Gaul; and, when Joan the Maid, heroine, sent Goetz von Berlichingen, the Vandal Chieftain, sprawling in the saw-dust, there was no end to the enthusiasm.
"We are all 'brigands'," said Pulitzer as we came away, "differing according to individual character, to race and pursuit. Now, if I were writing that play, I should represent the villain as a tyrannous City Editor, meanly executing the orders of a niggardly proprietor."
"And the heroine?" I said.
"She should be a beautiful and rich young lady," he replied, "who buys the newspaper and marries the cub--rescuing genius from poverty and persecution."
He was not then the owner of the World. He had not created the Post-Dispatch, or even met the beautiful woman who became his wife. He was a youngster of five or six and twenty, revisiting the scenes of his boyhood on the beautiful blue Danube, and taking in Paris for a lark.