“Time!” would cry Vergniaud, with a smile. (He might be, perhaps, unpacking a very little parcel of cheap linen that had just reached him from his family, his dear simpletons, of Bordeaux.) “But time is no arbitrary measure to the man who hath studied to make his own.” Says Ned, “You may make it, but you will always give it away to the first specious beggar that asks.” “Then I am only liberal with that that I do not value. ’Tis a poor habit of charity, I admit. But I could never keep it; hark! little Edward--I could never keep time, even when I danced!” “So foolish heirs mortgage their reversions.” “So alchemists squander their inexhaustible treasures, you mean. When time has done with me, I shall be past caring. Maybe the spendthrift will have gilded a poor home or two in his world.” “And, had he economised, he might have gilded the temples of an epoch.” “Oh, thou art an elegant moraliser! But I am more modest for myself--a Fabian by sentiment, not policy. I tell thee, an age so rich in opportunities invites to procrastination. A multiplicity of choice is the last inducement to choose. I loiter, like a child, in the fair, with my silver _livre-tournois_ in my pocket, and, until I spend it, I am lord of a hundred prospective delights. Let me wait till the lights are burning low, and then I will make my selection--the crown to a pyramid of enjoyments.” “And find that others before you have taken the pick of the fair while you ecstatically considered, and that you have at the last paid full price for a discarded residue.” “What, then, my friend! I shall be richer than the prudent by measure of a whole feast of anticipation--more satisfied, if less gorged. The early bird eats his chicken in the egg. (_Corne de Dieu_! there is a fine marriage of proverbs!) He has nothing to look forward to but a day of blank satiety. I cannot at once have the dreams of youth and the sober retrospections of age.”