Macaire. Man of little vision, expound me these meteors! What do they signify, O wooden-head? Clod, of what do they consist?
Bertrand. Damned bad tobacco.
Macaire. I will give you a little course of science. Everything, Bertrand (much as it may surprise you), has three states: a vapour, a liquid, a solid. These are fortune in the vapour: these are ideas. What are ideas? the protoplasm of wealth. To your head—which, by the way, is solid, Bertrand—what are they but foul air? To mine, to my prehensile and constructive intellects, see, as I grasp and work them, to what lineaments of the future they transform themselves: a palace, a barouche, a pair of luminous footmen, plate, wine, respect, and to be honest!
Bertrand. But what’s the sense in honesty?
Macaire. The sense? You see me: Macaire: elegant, immoral, invincible in cunning; well, Bertrand, much as it may surprise you, I am simply damned by my dishonesty.
Bertrand. No!
Macaire. The honest man, Bertrand, that’s God’s noblest work. He carries the bag, my boy. Would you have me define honesty? the strategic point for theft. Bertrand, if I’d three hundred a year, I’d be honest to-morrow.
Bertrand. Ah! don’t you wish you may get it!
Macaire. Bertrand, I will bet you my head against your own—the longest odds I can imagine—that with honesty for my spring-board, I leap through history like a paper hoop, and come out among posterity heroic and immortal.