at!

I should have been always on the watch to take him down a peg when
he was pleased with himself--to hold him cheap and overpraise some
duffer in his hearing--so that I might save my own self-esteem; to
pay him bad little left-handed compliments, him and his, whenever I
was out of humor; and I should have been always out of humor, having
failed in life.

And then I should have gone home wretched--for I have a
conscience--and woke up in the middle of the night and thought of
Barty; and what a kind, genial, jolly, large-minded, and
generous-hearted old chap he was and always had been--and buried my
face in my pillow, and muttered:

"Ach! what a poor, mean, jealous beast I am--un fruit sec! un
malheureux rate!"

With all my success, this life-long exclusive cultivation of Barty's
society, and that of his artistic friends, which has somehow
unfitted me for the society of my brother-merchants of wine--and
most merchants of everything else--has not, I regret to say, quite
fitted me to hold my own among the "leaders of intellectual modern
thought," whose company I would fain seek and keep in preference to
any other.

My very wealth seems to depress and disgust them, as it does me--and
I'm no genius, I admit, and a poor conversationalist.

To amass wealth is an engrossing pursuit--and now that I have
amassed a good deal more than I quite know what to do with, it seems
to me a very ignoble one. It chokes up everything that makes life
worth living; it leaves so little time for the constant and regular
practice of those ingenuous arts which faithfully to have learned is
said to soften the manners, and make one an agreeable person all
round.

It is even more _abrutissant_ than the mere pursuit of sport or
pleasure.

How many a noble lord I know who's almost as beastly rich as myself,
and twice as big a fool by nature, and perhaps not a better fellow
at bottom--yet who can command the society of all there is of the
best in science, literature, and art!

Not but what they will come and dine with me fast enough, these
shining lights of culture and intellect--my food is very good,
although I say it, and I get noble lords to meet them.

But they talk their real talk to each other--not to me--and to the
noble lords who sit by them at my table, and who try to understand
what they say. With me they fall back on politics and bimetallism,
for all the pains I've taken to get up the subjects that interest
them, and keep myse