“After this dreadful session (the date will remain engraved upon my soul to my dying day!—it was the anniversary of the day upon which my grandfather, your great grandfather, dear boys, had been hanged) I paced up and down in my courtyard alone, no longer soothed by the ceaseless whisper of my beloved fountains, in no mood for taking down any one of my famous scrolls, nor even for toying with the numerous Circassians whom I had imported at vast expense during the preceding months. My bosom and my brow were contracted and I was weary of life.
“But after some hours of these mournful reflections some considerations of hope occurred to me. ‘After all,’ said I to myself, ‘there must be ups and downs. Many a man has lost a fortune and recovered it. My income is halved, but what remains is still ample.’ I could yet call myself an extremely wealthy man—among the wealthiest in the State. The small tax put upon my revenue I could not grudge, since it fell also upon the revenues of others.
“But I was to learn what bitter truth there lay behind the oft-repeated boast of these people that they proceeded step by step, slowly, one thing at a time, etc., etc., etc. Not a month had passed but a modification was issued to the first regulation and it was ordained, in view of certain rumours which had been heard in the market-place, that the tax on revenue should be of a more complicated kind. It was to begin, indeed, at one dinar in the hundred, but since it was harsh to apply even this small burden to the poorer citizens, only those receiving at least one thousand dinars should pay, and the proportion was to rise rapidly with the larger fortunes until, for such a man as myself, the proportion reached one quarter of the total! But worse was to come.
“Yielding to the vigorous popular clamour, the tax was doubled for those of alien birth. For those whose income was derived in any way from the revenues of State the tax was doubled again. Exception was made for the Councillors, for (so ran the Proclamation) their salaries are paid by his Majesty, and a diminution of them would but take money with one hand to give it back to the other. I hoped for one wild moment that I should come within so clear a category. But no! In a further clause it was specially indicated that this should apply only to salaries actually paid by the Treasury and not to annuities guaranteed by, or derived from, the public revenue directly—and my payment alone was of this kind in all the Council!
“Still more was to follow. An infamous new regulation appeared whereby a man should pay, not upon that which he actually received, but upon that which he had received in the course of three years—a space of time exactly corresponding to my presence in the island and attaching to my vast income of the past. It was clear that I was ruined. I made a brief calculation on the night after the last of these official Acts had been published. After taking this survey of my remaining wealth (I had already sold the most part of my movables, and had removed from my great palace to a humble lodging) I discovered that I had left in my hands, all told, less than one thousand dinars.
“I knew not how to look upon the world. My whole being seemed to have departed. I watched the day fading, and with it faded my spirit. I returned to my poor room and, very late, lost, or half-lost, my miseries in an imperfect slumber.”
The old man concluded and bowed his head in a solemn silence. His young nephews appreciating how sacred a thing is death, especially the death of Money, glided on tiptoe out of the room and vanished.
