hrew money away by the handful."

"Indeed!"

"Imagine a man about fifty years old, stiff as a post, with a face
about as pleasant as a prison-gate. That's the boss! Summer and
winter, he wore laced shoes, blue stockings, gray pantaloons that
were too short, a cotton necktie, and a frock-coat that came down
to his ankles. In the street, you would have taken him for a hosier
who had retired before his fortune was made."

"You don't say so!"

"No, never have I seen a man look so much like an old miser. You
think, perhaps, that he came in a carriage. Not a bit of it! He
came in the omnibus, my boy, and outside too, for three sous; and
when it rained he opened his umbrella. But the moment he had
crossed the threshold of the house, presto, pass! complete change
of scene. The miser became pacha. He took off his old duds, put
on a blue velvet robe; and then there was nothing handsome enough,
nothing good enough, nothing expensive enough for him. And, when
he had acted the my lord to his heart's content, he put on his old
traps again, resumed his prison-gate face, climbed up on top of the
omnibus, and went off as he came."

"And you were not surprised, all of you, at such a life?"

"Very much so."

"And you did not think that these singular whims must conceal
something?"

"Oh, but we did!"

"And you didn't try to find out what that something was?"

"How could we?"

"Was it very difficult to follow your boss, and ascertain where he
went, after leaving the house?"

"Certainly not; but what then?"

"Why," he replied, "you would have found out his secret in the end;
and then you would have gone to him and told him, 'Give me so much,
or I peach.'"

V

This story of M. Vincent, as told by these two honest companions,
was something like the vulgar legend of other people's money, so
eagerly craved, and so madly dissipated. Easily-gotten wealth is
easily gotten rid of. Stolen money has fatal tendencies, and turns
irresistibly to gambling, horse-jockeys, fast women, all the ruinous
fancies, all the unwholesome gratifications.

They are rare indeed, among the daring cut-throats of speculation,
those to whom their ill-gotten gain proves of real service,--so
rare, that they are pointed out, and are as easily numbered as the
girls who leap some night from the street to a ten-thousand-franc
apartment, and manage to remain there.

Seized with the intoxication of sudden wealth, they lose all measure
and