Payot sighed and merely shook his head. "I perceive you are an optimist, monsieur, and to be candid with you I confess I dread optimists. They are only a shade better than the pessimists. The latter look only on the dark side of everything, and are so cautious that they are afraid to embark on any enterprise at all, the result being that they never attempt anything unless it is absolutely devoid of any risk whatsoever. But the optimists--believe me, I have had enough of them, goodness only knows--the optimist, I repeat, always counts his chickens before they are hatched. He sees everything through rose-coloured spectacles. He counts on everything going right, and makes no provision for anything going wrong. This fanatic has also a curious way of calculating the number of tons of ore extracted every month which he multiplies by the number of ounces assayed per ton, and sets the total down as the amount which will be distributed in dividends. The silly fellow overlooks the immense amount of money which has to be sunk in working capital on the mine--in transport, food, tools, machinery, water, motive power and fuel. The condition of the roads, the proximity to a railway, the amount of available horse-power, fuel and water, the absence of any one of which is enough to ruin the prospects of the best mine--are details which never trouble him in the least. Nothing is set aside for reserve, nothing for emergencies, and so his estimate of the profits instead of being, let us say for the sake of argument, £10,000 a month, really works out at £1,000--or a tenth of his estimate when it comes to be divided among the shareholders. In a word, he becomes saturated with megalomania like a general paralytic." "My dear Payot, you have almost taken the words out of my mouth, so thoroughly do I agree with all that you have just said," replied Armand, "but you are entirely mistaken, if you imagine that I am an optimist. On the contrary, I am so cautious that my friends nickname me the pessimist, a quite inappropriate term, I assure you, since I have the reputation of having the dash and boldness of the great Napoleon. Is that not so, baron?" The baron had been nodding approval so violently at every word that his friend Armand had been saying, that he had to express his assent by patting him on the back instead. "My dear Payot," said the baron, "excuse me always addressing you in this way--but your charm of manner has so won my heart that I feel it quite impossible to address you by any other term. If you will be good enough to read the prospectus carefully you will see that everyone of these items is munificently provided for. No detail has been omitted. The sum which our engineer considers ample to meet every possible contingency only amounts to £10,000 a month."