One brooding noonday, as Hazen was travelling, alone and tired, on the highroad, a carriage overtook him, and the gentleman within, looking sharply at him, ordered the carriage stopped, and asked him courteously if he was not the poet whose songs he had sometimes heard, and of whose knowledge and good-fellowship others had told him. It proved that it was no other than Hazen whom he meant, and he took him with him in his carriage to a great, wonderful house overlooking the valley, and commanding a sovereign mountain on whose very summit stood a deserted castle. It seemed as if merely looking on that wonderful prospect would help one to be wise and _really_ good and beautiful and worthy to be loved. At once Hazen’s host, the Gentleman of the Carriage, began showing him his treasures and all that made life for him. The house was filled with curious and beautiful things, pictures, ivories, marbles, and tapestries, and with many friends. In the evenings there were always festivities; mirth and laughter were everywhere, and Hazen was laden with gifts of these and other things, and delighted in the entertainment. But by day, in a high-ceiled library and a cool study, the two spent hours pouring over letters and science, finding out the secrets of the world, getting on the other side of words, saying sentences, and thinking thoughts that became solid; or they would wander on the hillsides and carry rare books and dream of the beauty in the world and weave little songs. Now they would be idle, now absorbed in feats of strength, and now they would descend into the town and there delight in its great sport. And in all this Hazen had some part and earned his own way, because of his cleverness and willingness to enter in the life and belong to it. One day, standing on a balcony of the beautiful house, looking across at the mountain and the deserted castle, Hazen said aloud:-- “This is the true life. This is fortune. For now I hear all the voices of all my Selves, and I give good things to each, and I am king of them all!” But even as he spoke he heard another voice sounding within his own, and it laughed, and cracked as it laughed, so that it sounded like something being broken that could never be mended. “I told you so, Hazen! I told you so!” it cried. “Being loved and _really_ good do not mean making our fortune. Just one thing means fortune, and that is being rich. To be rich, _rich_, means good times and learning and beauty and idleness. I’ve fought every one of the others, and now you’ve got all that they had to offer, because you have let me be king--_me and no other_.” To his horror, Hazen recognized the voice of the dwarf, the Riches Self, and knew that he was deceived again, that he himself was ruler of nothing, and that the dwarf was now king of all his Selves.