I laughed. “Well, I shan’t provide funds for the building of a church, or the endowment of a hospital,”—I said—“I shall not even start a Free Library, for these institutions, besides becoming centres for infectious diseases, generally get presided over by a committee of local grocers who presume to consider themselves judges of literature. My dear Prince Rimânez, I mean to spend my money on my own pleasure, and I daresay I shall find plenty of ways to do it.”
Rimânez fanned away the smoke of his cigar with one hand, and his dark eyes shone with a peculiarly vivid light through the pale grey floating haze.
“With your fortune, you could make hundreds of miserable people happy;”—he suggested.
“Thanks, I would rather be happy myself first”—I answered gaily—“I daresay I seem to you selfish,—you are philanthropic I know; I am not.”
He still regarded me steadily.
“You might help your fellow-workers in literature....”
I interrupted him with a decided gesture.
“That I will never do, my friend, though the heavens should crack! My fellow-workers in literature have kicked me down at every opportunity, and done their best to keep me from earning a bare livelihood,—it is my turn at kicking now, and I will show them as little mercy, as little help, as little sympathy as they have shown me!”
“Revenge is sweet!” he quoted sententiously—“I should recommend your starting a high-class half-crown magazine.”