l, not on their
income, as gamesters do. There is an idea among us that it is
necessary to seem rich in order to become rich. Thus there is a general
extravagance and profusion. English milords marvel at our splendour.
Those who, while spending their capital as their income, fail in their
schemes of fortune, after one, two, three, or four years, vanish. What
becomes of them, I know no more than I do what becomes of the old moons.
Their place is immediately supplied by new candidates. Paris is thus
kept perennially sumptuous and splendid by the gold it engulfs. But
then some men succeed,--succeed prodigiously, preternaturally; they make
colossal fortunes, which are magnificently expended. They set an example
of show and pomp, which is of course the more contagious because so many
men say, 'The other day those millionnaires were as poor as we are; they
never economized; why should we?' Paris is thus doubly enriched,--by the
fortunes it swallows up, and by the fortunes it casts up; the last
being always reproductive, and the first never lost except to the
individuals."

"I understand: but what struck me forcibly at the scene we have left was
the number of young men there; young men whom I should judge by their
appearance to be gentlemen, evidently not mere spectators,--eager,
anxious, with tablets in their hands. That old or middle-aged men should
find a zest in the pursuit of gain I can understand, but youth and
avarice seem to me a new combination, which Moliere never divined in his
'Avare.'"

"Young men, especially if young gentlemen, love pleasure; and pleasure
in this city is very dear. This explains why so many young men frequent
the Bourse. In the old gaining now suppressed, young men were the
majority; in the days of your chivalrous forefathers it was the young
nobles, not the old, who would stake their very mantles and swords on a
cast of the die. And, naturally enough, mon cher; for is not youth
the season of hope, and is not hope the goddess of gaming, whether at
rouge-et-noir or the Bourse?"

Alain felt himself more and more behind his generation. The acute
reasoning of Lemercier humbled his amour propre. At college Lemercier
was never considered Alain's equal in ability or book-learning. What
a stride beyond his school-fellow had Lemercier now made! How dull and
stupid the young provincial felt himself to be as compared with the easy
cleverness and half-sportive philosophy of the Parisian's fluent talk!