serene and tranquil happiness; and as we
all have some bright day--many of us, let us hope, among a crowd of
others--to which we revert with particular delight, so this one was
often looked back to afterwards, as holding a conspicuous place in the
calendar of those who shared it.

Was there one exception, and that one he who needed to have been most
happy?

Who was that who, in the silence of his own chamber, sunk upon his knees
to pray as his first friend had taught him, and folding his hands and
stretching them wildly in the air, fell upon his face in a passion of
bitter grief?

CHAPTER 44

Mr Ralph Nickleby cuts an old Acquaintance. It would also appear from
the Contents hereof, that a Joke, even between Husband and Wife, may be
sometimes carried too far

There are some men who, living with the one object of enriching
themselves, no matter by what means, and being perfectly conscious of
the baseness and rascality of the means which they will use every day
towards this end, affect nevertheless--even to themselves--a high tone
of moral rectitude, and shake their heads and sigh over the depravity of
the world. Some of the craftiest scoundrels that ever walked this earth,
or rather--for walking implies, at least, an erect position and the
bearing of a man--that ever crawled and crept through life by its
dirtiest and narrowest ways, will gravely jot down in diaries the
events of every day, and keep a regular debtor and creditor account with
Heaven, which shall always show a floating balance in their own favour.
Whether this is a gratuitous (the only gratuitous) part of the falsehood
and trickery of such men's lives, or whether they really hope to cheat
Heaven itself, and lay up treasure in the next world by the same process
which has enabled them to lay up treasure in this--not to question
how it is, so it is. And, doubtless, such book-keeping (like certain
autobiographies which have enlightened the world) cannot fail to prove
serviceable, in the one respect of sparing the recording Angel some time
and labour.

Ralph Nickleby was not a man of this stamp. Stern, unyielding, dogged,
and impenetrable, Ralph cared for nothing in life, or beyond it, save
the gratification of two passions, avarice, the first and predominant
appetite of his nature, and hatred, the second. Affecting to consider
himself but a type of all humanity, he was at little pains to conceal
his true character from the world in general, and in