e large family of misers. Misers are generally exhibited in a
ridiculous and whimsical light; the worst do not go beyond egotism or
harshness. The greater portion increase their fortune by continually
investing; some (they are but few) lend at thirty per cent.; the most
decided hardly venture any risk with their means; but it is almost an
unheard-of thing for a miser to proceed to crime, even murder, in the
acquisition of fresh wealth.

That is easily accounted for; avarice is especially a negative passion.
The miser, in his incessant calculations, thinks more of becoming richer
by not disbursing; in tightening around him, more and more, the limits
of strict necessity, than he does of enriching himself at the cost of
another; he is especially the martyr to preservation. Weak, timid,
cunning, distrustful, and, above all, prudent and circumspect, never
offensive, indifferent to the ills of his neighbour,--the miser at least
never alludes to these ills,--he is, before all and above all, the man
of certainty and surety; or, rather, he is only a miser because he
believes only in the substantial, the hard gold which he has locked up
in his chest. Speculations and loans, on even undoubted security, tempt
him but little, for, how improbable soever it may be, they always offer
a chance of loss, and he prefers rather to lose the interest of his
money than expose his capital. A man so timorous will, therefore, seldom
have the savage energy of the wretch who risks the galleys or his neck
to lay hands on the wealth of another.

Risk is a word erased from the vocabulary of the miser. It is in this
sense that Jacques Ferrand was, let us say, a very singular exception,
perhaps a new variety of the genus Miser; for Jacques Ferrand did risk,
and a great deal. He relied on his craft, which was excessive; on his
hypocrisy, which was unbounded; on his intellect, which was elastic and
fertile; on his boldness, which was devilish, in assuring him impunity
for his crimes, and they were already numerous.

Jacques Ferrand was a twofold exception. Usually these adventurous,
energetic spirits, which do not recoil before any crime that will
procure gold, are beset by turbulent passions--gaming, dissipation,
gluttony, or other pleasures. Jacques Ferrand knew none of these violent
and stormy desires; cunning and patient as a forger, cruel and resolute
as an assassin, he was as sober and regular as Harpagon. One passion
alone was active within him,