are to calculate and make out for him
by certain fantastical combinations, what he is worth, how he is
favoured: his dark passions start up when he supposes that this chance
neglects him; he triumphs when he fancies it sides with him; his blood
flows more rapidly, his head is in an uprore, his heart throbs
tumultuously, and he is more wretched than the madman that is lying in
chains, when every card, down to the very last, turns up against him.
Look you, this is the king of the creation in his patcht beggar's
garb, which he takes to be a royal robe."

The old man almost laught, and Edward replied: "Such is the case with
all life; it runs along on a narrow line between truth and fancy,
between reality and delusion."

"Be it so!" cried Balthasar. "But no more of this. I was only going to
tell you how I let myself be persuaded by my partner in the last year
of his life to put for once into the neighbouring lottery. I did so
against my own feelings; because these institutions appear to me
deserving of the severest punishment. By them the state sanctions
highway-robbery and murder. Even without such things ill-fated man is
immoderately inflamed by the lust of gain. I had already forgotten the
paltry concern, when I heard I had gained the great prize: after
receiving the payment it never let me rest. What the vulgar fable of
evil spirits, had come into my house along with these money-bags. This
unblest sum supplied the funds for the hospital for sick old women in
the valley a couple of leagues off, the building of which has been
made such a merit of by senseless newspaper-scribes. What had I
contributed toward it? Not even a stroke of the pen. Now you will
understand how my perpetual gains, and the sums that flowed in to me
from every venture, compelled me to plunge into fresh speculations,
and how this has been going on year after year upon an ever-widening
scale. And thus there is neither rest nor pause, until death will at
length put the last full stop to the matter for this bout. Then some
one else will of course begin to rave on just where I left off, and
the same invisible power will perhaps meet his folly under the shape
of misfortune."

Edward knew not what to say. "You are not yet used," the old man
continued, "to my words and expressions, because we have never yet
talked upon these matters; you do not yet know my way of thinking; and
as these feelings, these views of life are still new to you, you are
surprised