slave? How will he come forth from that den? stripped naked or bent beneath the weight of gold? What does it matter? He will return to-morrow to remake his fortune, to lose it or to triple it. The one thing impossible for him is repose; he is like the storm bird that cannot live without raging winds and an angry sea. He is accused of loving gold! he loves it so little that he throws it away by the handful. That gift of hell is powerless to benefit him or satisfy his craving. He is no sooner rich than he is in great haste to be ruined in order to enjoy that nerve-racking, terrible emotion without which life is tasteless to him. What is gold in his eyes? Less in itself than grains of sand in yours. But gold is to him an emblem of the blessings and the evils which he seeks and defies. Gold is his plaything, his enemy, his God, his dream, his demon, his mistress, his poesy: it is the ghost which haunts him, which he attacks, grasps, and then allows to escape, that he may have the pleasure of renewing the struggle and of engaging once more in a hand-to-hand conflict with destiny. It is magnificent, I tell you! It is absurd, to be sure, and should be condemned, because energy thus employed is of no advantage to society, because the man who expends his strength for such an end robs his fellow-men of all the good he might have done, them with less selfishness; but when you condemn him, do not despise him, ye narrow-minded creatures who are capable of neither good nor evil; do not gaze with dismay at the colossus of will-power, struggling thus on a tempestuous sea for the sole purpose of exerting his strength and forcing the sea back. His selfishness leads him into the midst of fatigues and dangers, as yours binds you down to patient, hard-working occupations. How many men in the whole world can you think of who work for their country without thinking of themselves? He voluntarily isolates himself, sets himself apart; he stakes his present, his repose, his honor. He dooms himself to suffering, to fatigue. Deplore his error if you will, but do not compare yourself with him, in the pride of your heart, in order to glorify yourself at his expense. Let his fatal example serve simply to console you for your own harmless nullity." "O heaven!" I replied, "upon what sophistries your heart feeds, or else how weak my mind must be! What! the gambler is not despicable, you say? O Leoni, why, having so much strength of mind, have you not employed it in overcoming yourself in the interest of your fellow-men?"