The connections formed by his marriage occasioned additional incentives to expense. Introduced into a more elevated circle than he had as yet moved in, and impelled by the evil ambition of outshining every one with whom he associated, Winstanley soon found innumerable new opportunities for spending money. He became a prey to imaginary necessities. His carriages, his horses, his villas and their furniture, his dinners, his wines, his yachts;--her _fêtes_ in the morning and her balls in the evening, her gardens (which were for ever changing), her delicate health, which required the constant excitement of continental travel, and yachting excursions;--the dress of both; the wild extravagance of every thing,--I leave you to picture to yourselves. CHAPTER THE THIRD. What is five thousand a year, when a man spends six? Make it ten, and he will spend twelve. There is an old story I have heard my mother tell:-- A man had a legacy left him, so large, that upon the strength of it he was enabled to change his plan of life. He sat down and calculated the style in which it would henceforward become him to live. His arrangement of income and expenditure would have been perfect, only that the income fell short a certain, not very large, sum. This was a sad business. A few hundreds more, and he would have been quite at ease--he had them not--he began to feel rather poor. A letter arrives from his man of business. There has been a mistake; the legacy is of twice the amount it had been at first stated at. How will it become him to live now? That is easily settled--he has only to double all his expenses. Alas! And he remains twice as poor as he was before. There is no limit to extravagance--it is a bottomless chasm which is not to be filled. The income does not exactly suffice--and no man ought to exceed his income. True, but there are unexpected expenses--things that perhaps may never recur. The prudent man economizes something else; the imprudent man goes to his capital. He unlocks that sacred door of which he holds the enchanted key in his hand--and ruin rushes out upon him as a flood. Julian soon began to touch upon his capital. It was but in small sums at first, and yet it is astonishing how rich and easy (for the time) it made him feel. A thousand or two thus added to a man's income makes all mighty smooth, and the consequent diminution of his future revenue is a trifle, not felt, and not worth thinking of. Desires increase with the means to gratify them. He who takes a thousand or two from his capital, soon finds it necessary to take more. Income diminishes as desires gain strength; the habit of indulgence grows as the means to gratify it decline.