carriages, opera-boxes, and cooks, and I have had a
great estate; but pocket-money I never could get. Pocket-money was the
thing which always cost me the most to buy of all.'

The conversation now fell upon the theatre. Mr. Bond Sharpe was
determined to have a theatre. He believed it was reserved for him to
revive the drama. Mr. Bond Sharpe piqued himself upon his patronage of
the stage. He certainly had a great admiration of actresses. There
was something in the management of a great theatre which pleased the
somewhat imperial fancy of Mr. Bond Sharpe. The manager of a great
theatre is a kind of monarch. Mr. Bond Sharpe longed to seat himself on
the throne, with the prettiest women in London for his court, and
all his fashionable friends rallying round their sovereign. He had an
impression that great results might be obtained with his organising
energy and illimitable capital. Mr. Bond Sharpe had unbounded confidence
in the power of capital. Capital was his deity. He was confident that
it could always produce alike genius and triumph. Mr. Bond Sharpe was
right: capital is a wonderful thing, but we are scarcely aware of this
fact until we are past thirty; and then, by some singular process, which
we will not now stop to analyse, one's capital is in general sensibly
diminished. As men advance in life, all passions resolve themselves into
money. Love, ambition, even poetry, end in this.

'Are you going to Shropshire's this autumn, Charley?' said Lord
Catchimwhocan.

'Yes, I shall go.'

'I don't think I shall,' said his lordship; 'it is such a bore.'

'It is rather a bore; but he is a good fellow.'

'I shall go,' said Count Mirabel.

'You are not afraid of being bored,' said Ferdinand, smiling.

'Between ourselves, I do not understand what this being bored is,' said
the Count. 'He who is bored appears to me a bore. To be bored supposes
the inability of being amused; you must be a dull fellow. Wherever I may
be, I thank heaven that I am always diverted.'

'But you have such nerves, Mirabel,' said Lord Catchimwhocan. 'By Jove!
I envy you. You are never floored.'

'Floored! what an idea! What should floor me? I live to amuse myself,
and I do nothing that does not amuse me. Why should I be floored?'

'Why, I do not know; but every other man is floored now and then. As for
me, my spirits are sometimes something dreadful.'

'When you have been losing.'

'Well, we cannot always win. Can we, Sharpe? That would not