I have lent a Chinaman money,
taking his father's corpse as a pledge, slept in an Arab's tent on the
security of his bare word, signed contracts in every capital of Europe,
and left my gold without hesitation in savage wigwams. I have attained
everything, because I have known how to despise all things.

"My one ambition has been to see. Is not Sight in a manner Insight?
And to have knowledge or insight, is not that to have instinctive
possession? To be able to discover the very substance of fact and to
unite its essence to our essence? Of material possession what abides
with you but an idea? Think, then, how glorious must be the life of a
man who can stamp all realities upon his thought, place the springs of
happiness within himself, and draw thence uncounted pleasures in idea,
unspoiled by earthly stains. Thought is a key to all treasures; the
miser's gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this
world, where my enjoyments have been intellectual joys. I have reveled
in the contemplation of seas, peoples, forests, and mountains! I have
seen all things, calmly, and without weariness; I have set my desires
on nothing; I have waited in expectation of everything. I have walked
to and fro in the world as in a garden round about my own dwelling.
Troubles, loves, ambitions, losses, and sorrows, as men call them,
are for me ideas, which I transmute into waking dreams; I express and
transpose instead of feeling them; instead of permitting them to prey
upon my life, I dramatize and expand them; I divert myself with them as
if they were romances which I could read by the power of vision within
me. As I have never overtaxed my constitution, I still enjoy robust
health; and as my mind is endowed with all the force that I have not
wasted, this head of mine is even better furnished than my galleries.
The true millions lie here," he said, striking his forehead. "I spend
delicious days in communings with the past; I summon before me whole
countries, places, extents of sea, the fair faces of history. In my
imaginary seraglio I have all the women that I have never possessed.
Your wars and revolutions come up before me for judgment. What is a
feverish fugitive admiration for some more or less brightly colored
piece of flesh and blood; some more or less rounded human form; what
are all the disasters that wait on your erratic whims, compared with
the magnificent power of conjuring up the whole world within your soul,
compar