There’s a summary of a lifetime for you. One has no regrets, of course. But still, one does need cash—needs it the more, alas, the older one grows, and has less of it. What other reason, do you think, would send me sweating up this hill to talk with the village grocer about his brother’s statuary?” “You mean that you’d buy it if it were worth anything?” “At the lowest possible price,” confirmed Mr. Cardan. “And sell it at the highest. If I had ever adopted a profession,” he continued, “I think it would have been art dealing. It has the charm of being more dishonest than almost any other form of licensed brigandage in existence. And dishonest, moreover, in a much more amusing way. Financiers, it is true, can swindle on a larger scale; but their swindling is mostly impersonal. You may ruin thousands of trusting investors; but you haven’t the pleasure of knowing your victims. Whereas if you’re an art dealer, your swindling, though less extensive, is most amusingly personal. You meet your victims face to face and do them down. You take advantage of the ignorance or urgent poverty of the vendor to get the work for nothing. You then exploit the snobbery and the almost equally profound ignorance of the rich buyer to make him take the stuff off your hands at some fantastic price. What huge elation one must feel when one has succeeded in bringing off some splendid _coup_! bought a blackened panel from some decayed gentleman in need of a new suit, cleaned it up and sold it again to a rich snob who thinks that a collection and the reputation of being a patron of the ancient arts will give him a leg up in society—what vast Rabelaisian mirth! No, decidedly, if I were not Diogenes and idle, I would be Alexander, critic and dealer. A really gentlemanly profession.” “Can you never be serious?” asked Miss Thriplow, who would have preferred the conversation to turn on something more nearly related to her own problems. Mr. Cardan smiled at her. “Can anybody fail to be serious when it’s a question of making money?” “I give you up,” said Miss Thriplow.