be apt to dream of, but never succeed in finding. I began to feel perfectly at my ease, and talked with freedom and confidence, the strong attraction I had for my new friend deepening with every moment I passed in his company. "Will you continue your literary career now you have this little fortune left you?" he inquired, when at the close of supper Amiel set the choicest cognac and cigars before us, and respectfully withdrew--"Do you think you will care to go on with it?" "Certainly I shall"--I replied--"if only for the fun of the thing. You see, with money I can force my name into notice whether the public like it or not. No newspaper refuses paying advertisements." "True!--but may not inspiration refuse to flow from a full purse and an empty head?" This remark provoked me not a little. "Do you consider me empty-headed?" I asked with some vexation. "Not at present. My dear Tempest, do not let either the Tokay we have been drinking, or the cognac we are going to drink, speak for you in such haste! I assure you I do not think you empty-headed,--on the contrary, your head, I believe from what I have heard, has been and is full of ideas,--excellent ideas, original ideas, which the world of conventional criticism does not want. But whether these ideas will continue to germinate in your brain, or whether, with the full purse, they will cease, is now the question. Great originality and inspiration, strange to say, seldom endow the millionaire. Inspiration is supposed to come from above,--money from below! In your case however both originality and inspiration may continue to flourish and bring forth fruit,--I trust they may. It often happens, nevertheless that when bags of money fall to the lot of aspiring genius, God departs and the devil walks in. Have you never heard that?" "Never!" I answered smiling. "Well, of course the saying is foolish, and sounds doubly ridiculous in this age when people believe in neither God nor devil. It implies however that one must choose an up or a down,--genius is the Up, money is the Down. You cannot fly and grovel at the same instant." "The possession of money is not likely to cause a man to grovel"--I said--"It is the one thing necessary to strengthen his soaring powers and lift him to the greatest heights."