thematics and talk
to him."

On hearing these words the lunatic rose, looked at Gaudissart, made him
a sign to sit down, and said, "Let us converse, Monsieur."

The two women went into Madame Margaritis' bedroom, leaving the
door open so as to hear the conversation, and interpose if it became
necessary. They were hardly installed before Monsieur Vernier crept
softly up through the field and, opening a window, got into the bedroom
without noise.

"Monsieur has doubtless been in business--?" began Gaudissart.

"Public business," answered Margaritis, interrupting him. "I pacificated
Calabria under the reign of King Murat."

"Bless me! if he hasn't gone to Calabria!" whispered Monsieur Vernier.

"In that case," said Gaudissart, "we shall quickly understand each
other."

"I am listening," said Margaritis, striking the attitude taken by a man
when he poses to a portrait-painter.

"Monsieur," said Gaudissart, who chanced to be turning his watch-key
with a rotatory and periodical click which caught the attention of the
lunatic and contributed no doubt to keep him quiet. "Monsieur, if you
were not a man of superior intelligence" (the fool bowed), "I should
content myself with merely laying before you the material advantages of
this enterprise, whose psychological aspects it would be a waste of time
to explain to you. Listen! Of all kinds of social wealth, is not
time the most precious? To economize time is, consequently, to become
wealthy. Now, is there anything that consumes so much time as those
anxieties which I call 'pot-boiling'?--a vulgar expression, but it puts
the whole question in a nutshell. For instance, what can eat up more
time than the inability to give proper security to persons from whom you
seek to borrow money when, poor at the moment, you are nevertheless rich
in hope?"

"Money,--yes, that's right," said Margaritis.

"Well, Monsieur, I am sent into the departments by a company of bankers
and capitalists, who have apprehended the enormous waste which
rising men of talent are thus making of time, and, consequently,
of intelligence and productive ability. We have seized the idea of
capitalizing for such men their future prospects, and cashing their
talents by discounting--what? _time_; securing the value of it to their
survivors. I may say that it is no longer a question of economizing
time, but of giving it a price, a quotation; of representing in a
pecuniary sense those products developed by time w