“Within ten years there were no bounds to my possessions. It was currently said that I myself had no conception of their magnitude, and I admit this was true. From time to time I would pay enormous sums to endow a place of learning, to benefit the Ministers of my own Religion (and its antagonists), or to propagate by means of an army of public criers some insignificant opinion peculiar to myself or my wife, your dear aunt—whose strong views upon the wearing of green turbans by Hadjis and the illumination of the Koran in red ink are doubtless familiar to you.
“I would also put up vast buildings to house the aged indigent whose name began with an A, or others wherein could be set to useful labour the aged indigent who were blind of one eye.
“I erected, endowed and staffed an immense establishment, standing in its own park-like grounds, wherein was taught and proved the true doctrine that gold and silver are but dross and that learning is the sole good; and yet others in which it was proved with equal certitude that learning, like all mundane things, is dust and only an exact knowledge of the Sacred Text worth having. But the Professors of this last science demanded double pay, urging (with sense, I thought) first that any fool could talk at large but that it took hard work to study manuscripts; second that only half a dozen men knew the documents exhaustively and that if they were under-rated they would stand aside and wreck the enterprise with their savage critiques.
“Meanwhile I devised in my leisure time an amusing instrument of gain called ‘The Cream Separator.’ I paid my wretched Sultan and his Court for a law, to be imposed, compelling all men, under pain of torture, to reveal their revenues from farming or any other reputable trade, but taking no account of gambling and juggling as being unimportant and too difficult to follow. I next paid another sum to the writers and spouters and other starvelings to denounce all who objected. For less than double this sum I brought a new law which swept away all the surplus of the better farmers and other reputable men into a general fund and paid out their cruel loss, partly in little doles to the very poor, but partly also (for fair play’s a jewel) in added stipends to the very rich with posts at Court: the Lord High Conjurer I especially favoured. Thus did I establish a firm friendship with the masses and with their governors and, I am glad to say, destroyed the middle sort who are a very dull, greasy, humdrum lot at the best, rightly detested by their betters as apes and by their inferiors as immediate masters.
“And on all this I took my little commission....
“My children!... My children!...” ended the old man, his eyes now full of frigid tears, “I had attained the summit of Human Life. I had all ... and there descended upon me what wealth—supreme wealth—alone can give: the Strong Peace of the Soul.”
His tears now flowed freely, and his nephews were touched beyond measure to see such emotion in one so great.
“It is,” he continued (with difficulty from his rising emotion), “it is wealth and wealth alone, wealth superior to all surrounding wealth, that can procure for man that equal vision of the world, that immense tolerance of evil, that unfailing hope for the morrow, and that profound content which furnish for the heart of man its resting place.”
Here the millionaire frankly broke down. He covered his face in his hands and his sobs were echoed by those of his respectful nephews, with the exception of the third with whom they degenerated into hiccoughs.
Mahmoud raised his strong, old, tear-stained features, dried his eyes and asked them (since his tale was now done) whether they had any questions to ask.