He.—But it is not for speaking the truth—on the contrary, it is for skilful lying that I covet your gift. If I knew how to write, to cook up a book, to turn a dedicatory epistle, to intoxicate a fool as to his own merits, to insinuate myself into the good graces of women!
I.—And you do know all that a thousand times better than I. I should not be worthy to be so much as your pupil.
He.—How many great qualities lost, of which you do not know the price.
I.—I get the price that I ask.
He.—If that were true, you would not be wearing that common suit, that rough waistcoat, those worsted stockings, those thick shoes, that ancient wig.
I.—I grant that; a man must be very maladroit not to be rich, if he sticks at nothing in order to become rich. But the odd thing is that there are people like me who do not look on riches as the most precious thing in the world; bizarre people, you know.
He.—Bizarre enough. A man is not born with such a twist as that. He takes the trouble to give it to himself, for it is not in nature.
He.—No; for everything that lives, without exception, seeks its own wellbeing at the expense of any prey that is proper to its purpose; and I am perfectly sure that if I let my little savage grow up without saying a word to him on the matter, he would wish to be richly clad, sumptuously fed, cherished by men, loved by women, and to heap upon himself all the happiness of life.
I.—If your little savage were left to himself, let him only preserve all his imbecility, and add to the scanty reason of the child in the cradle the violent passions of a man of thirty—why he would strangle his father and dishonour his own mother.