"Well, there is a still finer Raffaelle to be sold next week in Paris, at the Hôtel Drouot. The great Rochejaquelin collection comes to the hammer. There are some of the finest Greuzes in Europe. There are Meissoniers of the highest quality, and a famous Delaroche. I may not buy any of the pictures. No doubt the prices will be enormous. But I should like to see the collection once more, before it is scattered to the four winds. Would you mind running over to Paris with me for a week, or would you rather stay at home while I go?"
"I should like very much to go. I have never been in Paris with you, except hurrying through from station to station."
"Have you not? That is strange."
"I have never even seen the house where you lived when you were making your fortune in Paris."
"That would not be much to see. A ground floor near the Madeleine. A capital point for a business man; within ten minutes' walk of the Bourse, and in that central spot where the idlers and the workers alike congregate. A most uninteresting nest, Dora; nothing historical, or picturesque, or romantic, within half a mile."
"It will be enough for me that you lived and worked there. You must have worked very hard in those days."
"I was not one of the butterflies, I assure you."
"Mr. Distin told me that you turned your back upon all the dissipations and pleasures of Paris, that you were a man of one idea, working only for one end—to make a great fortune.
"That is the only way for a poor man to grow rich. I had to make brain-labour and concentration serve me instead of capital. I had the good luck to enter the Parisian Bourse at a period when fortunes might be made by hard thinking—when to win in the game of speculation was a question of mathematics. Nature and schooling had made me a decent mathematician, and I used all the science I had in fighting the coulissiers with their own weapons. But I am talking a language which you can't understand, Dora. Let the past be past. You and I have only to spend the money I earned in those days."
"You are always spending your wealth for the good of others, Julian," his wife answered tenderly. "Providence ought to bless the riches you earned in your laborious youth. I cannot imagine you caring for money for its own sake."