despised, than inclined to, show. Yet
since to plot and to scheme made his sole amusement, his absorbing
excitement, so a man wrapped in himself, and with no generous ends
in view, has little to plot or to scheme for but objects of worldly
aggrandizement. In this Dalibard resembled one whom the intoxication of
gambling has mastered, who neither wants nor greatly prizes the stake,
but who has grown wedded to the venture for it. It was a madness like
that of a certain rich nobleman in our own country who, with more money
than he could spend, and with a skill in all games where skill enters
that would have secured him success of itself, having learned the art of
cheating, could not resist its indulgence. No hazard, no warning, could
restrain him,--cheat he must; the propensity became iron-strong as a
Greek destiny.

That the possible chance of an inheritance so magnificent should dazzle
Lucretia and Gabriel, was yet more natural; for in them it appealed
to more direct and eloquent, though not more powerful, propensities.
Gabriel had every vice which the greed of gain most irritates and
excites. Intense covetousness lay at the core of his heart; he had
the sensual temperament, which yearns for every enjoyment, and takes
pleasure in every pomp and show of life. Lucretia, with a hardness of
mind that disdained luxury, and a certain grandeur (if such a word may
be applied to one so perverted) that was incompatible with the sordid
infirmities of the miser, had a determined and insatiable ambition, to
which gold was a necessary instrument. Wedded to one she loved, like
Mainwaring, the ambition, as we have said in a former chapter, could
have lived in another, and become devoted to intellectual efforts, in
the nobler desire for power based on fame and genius. But now she had
the gloomy cravings of one fallen, and the uneasy desire to restore
herself to a lost position; she fed as an aliment upon scorn to
bitterness of all beings and all things around her. She was gnawed by
that false fever which riots in those who seek by outward seemings
and distinctions to console themselves for the want of their own
self-esteem, or who, despising the world with which they are brought in
contact, sigh for those worldly advantages which alone justify to the
world itself their contempt.

To these diseased infirmities of vanity or pride, whether exhibited in
Gabriel or Lucretia, Dalibard administered without apparent effort, not
only by his conv