‘If I lend you the money to carry out your plans, it seems that I am entitled to ask what chance I have to be repaid. But apart from that, having vindicated your name, how many five-pound notes will it be worth?’
‘Why, look here,’ he said; ‘if that rascal can make a reputation and money by his stuff, which is only mine diluted and spoilt, surely for the genuine work of the real man’——
‘If you are trusting to that, I must decline to advance any money for the speculation. Why on earth, man, when you had a sufficient income paid you regularly, and lived as you liked, did you give it up and embark on a sea of trouble?’
‘Because I have a mission in this world, which I dream sometimes I shall accomplish.’
‘And the mission is?’
‘To open the eyes of fools.’
‘My dear fellow, they object to the operation, and have punished a good many people for trying it.’
‘Then I will be punished,’ he said. ‘But anyhow, I’ll expose these wretched smatterers, who serve up my things with all their wit and wisdom taken out of them, who travesty my best thoughts. Why, they have even made vulgar my very name!’
‘Houlot?’ I said, ‘Houlot? Is that the French for Dawson or Collingwood?’
‘That is not my real name,’ he said. ‘I abandoned that years ago. Every one turned his back upon the name. I did so myself at last.’