sequently, of his happiest strokes of
fortune. If he did not, like Dr. Franklin in Philadelphia, march along
the street munching a penny-loaf, it was only because he had not the
penny-loaf necessary to the performance. In his darkest days he had had
but one simple, practical impulse--the desire, as he would have phrased
it, to see the thing through. He did so at last, buffeted his way into
smooth waters, and made money largely. It must be admitted, rather
nakedly, that Christopher Newman's sole aim in life had been to
make money; what he had been placed in the world for was, to his own
perception, simply to wrest a fortune, the bigger the better, from
defiant opportunity. This idea completely filled his horizon and
satisfied his imagination. Upon the uses of money, upon what one might
do with a life into which one had succeeded in injecting the golden
stream, he had up to his thirty-fifth year very scantily reflected. Life
had been for him an open game, and he had played for high stakes. He had
won at last and carried off his winnings; and now what was he to do with
them? He was a man to whom, sooner or later, the question was sure to
present itself, and the answer to it belongs to our story. A vague sense
that more answers were possible than his philosophy had hitherto
dreamt of had already taken possession of him, and it seemed softly and
agreeably to deepen as he lounged in this brilliant corner of Paris with
his friend.

"I must confess," he presently went on, "that here I don't feel at
all smart. My remarkable talents seem of no use. I feel as simple as a
little child, and a little child might take me by the hand and lead me
about."

"Oh, I'll be your little child," said Tristram, jovially; "I'll take you
by the hand. Trust yourself to me."

"I am a good worker," Newman continued, "but I rather think I am a poor
loafer. I have come abroad to amuse myself, but I doubt whether I know
how."

"Oh, that's easily learned."

"Well, I may perhaps learn it, but I am afraid I shall never do it by
rote. I have the best will in the world about it, but my genius doesn't
lie in that direction. As a loafer I shall never be original, as I take
it that you are."

"Yes," said Tristram, "I suppose I am original; like all those immoral
pictures in the Louvre."

"Besides," Newman continued, "I don't want to work at pleasure, any
more than I played at work. I want to take it easily. I feel deliciously
lazy, and I should like t