nothing can stop his way!

_Jean_ [_to De Charsay_]--I have wanted to see you for a long time,
but I have not been sure how you would meet me.

_Rene_--I would have met you with pleasure, as my uncle would have met
you. One cannot utter reproaches to a man who has made his own
fortune, except when he has made it by dishonest means; a man who owes
it to his intelligence and his probity, who uses it worthily,
everybody is ready to meet kindly, as you are met here.

_Jean_--Sir, it is not necessary that a man should use his fortune
nobly, provided it is made--that is the main thing!

_Madame Durieu_--Oh, oh, M. Giraud! there you spoil everything that
you have said.

_Jean_--I don't say that of my own case, madam, but I say just what I
say,--money is money, whatever may be the kind of hands where it
sticks. It is the sole power that one never disputes. You may dispute
virtue, beauty, courage, genius; but you can't dispute money. There is
not one civilized being, rising in the morning, who does not recognize
the sovereignty of money, without which he would have neither the roof
which shelters, him, nor the bed in which he sleeps, nor the bread
that he eats. Whither are bound these masses of people crowding in the
streets?--from the employe sweating under his too heavy burden, to the
millionaire hurrying down to the Bourse behind his two trotters? The
one is running after fifteen sous, the other after one hundred
thousand francs. Why do we all have these shops, these railroads,
these factories, these theatres, these museums, these lawsuits between
brothers and sisters, between fathers and sons, these revelations,
these divisions in families, these murders? All for pieces, more or
less numerous, of that white or yellow metal which people call silver
or gold. And pray who will be the most thought of at the end of this
grand race after money? The man who brings back the most of it. Ah,
nowadays a man has no business to have more than one object in
life--and that is to become as rich as possible! For my part, that has
always been my idea; I have carried it out: I congratulate myself on
it. Once upon a time everybody found me homely, stupid, a bore; to-day
everybody finds me handsome, witty, amiable,--and the Lord knows if
_I_ am witty, amiable, handsome! On the day when I might be stupid
enough to let myself be ruined, to become plain "Jean" as before,
there would not be enough stones in the Montmartre quarries to throw
at