"A pair of us! For the last month I have performed the Wandering Jew all by myself. Now I have company. What shall we do to be jolly?"
"Jolly!"—with a tone of melancholy surprise.
"When should a man be jolly, if he can't when he's nothing to do? I am the slave of gold, you understand. If any rich magician rubs his double-eagles before me, woe is me, if I don't paint! When the magicians send their eagles on other errands, I am free from their drudgery. Meanwhile, I live on air, flattened out and packed away, like a Mexican horned-frog, or a dreaming toad, in a fissure of a preadamite rock."
"I am sorry I haven't your art of making misfortune comfortable."
"Misfortune? My philosophical friend, there isn't any such thing. The true man is superior to circumstances or accidents. (Some old fellow, I believe, has said that; somebody always says my good things before me; but no matter.) Nothing can happen amiss to the wise and good."
"Then I am neither wise nor good, for I have lost my all, and it comes confoundedly amiss to me."
"Your all? That's what the shoemaker said; but he bought a new one for six-pence. But, how happened it?"
"By my folly."
"I knew that, of course; but I wanted to know what folly in particular."
"I trusted it to a man whom I thought not only honest, but my friend, and he has proved a scoundrel."