Margaritis was seated in an arm-chair covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, near the window of the salon, and he did not stir as the two ladies entered with Gaudissart. His thoughts were running on the casks of wine. He was a spare man, and his bald head, garnished with a few spare locks at the back of it, was pear-shaped in conformation. His sunken eyes, overtopped by heavy black brows and surrounded by discolored circles, his nose, thin and sharp like the blade of a knife, the strongly marked jawbone, the hollow cheeks, and the oblong tendency of all these lines, together with his unnaturally long and flat chin, contributed to give a peculiar expression to his countenance,--something between that of a retired professor of rhetoric and a rag-picker.
"Monsieur Margaritis," cried Madame Vernier, addressing him, "come, stir about! Here is a gentleman whom my husband sends to you, and you must listen to him with great attention. Put away your mathematics and talk to him."On hearing these words the lunatic rose, looked at Gaudissart, made him a sign to sit down, and said, "Let us converse, Monsieur."The two women went into Madame Margaritis' bedroom, leaving the door open so as to hear the conversation, and interpose if it became necessary. They were hardly installed before Monsieur Vernier crept softly up through the field and, opening a window, got into the bedroom without noise.
"Monsieur has doubtless been in business--?" began Gaudissart.
"Public business," answered Margaritis, interrupting him. "Ipacificated Calabria under the reign of King Murat.""Bless me! if he hasn't gone to Calabria!" whispered Monsieur Vernier.
"In that case," said Gaudissart, "we shall quickly understand each other.""I am listening," said Margaritis, striking the attitude taken by a man when he poses to a portrait-painter.
"Monsieur," said Gaudissart, who chanced to be turning his watch-key with a rotatory and periodical click which caught the attention of the lunatic and contributed no doubt to keep him quiet. "Monsieur, if you were not a man of superior intelligence" (the fool bowed), "I should content myself with merely laying before you the material advantages of this enterprise, whose psychological aspects it would be a waste of time to explain to you. Listen! Of all kinds of social wealth, is not time the most precious? To economize time is, consequently, to become wealthy. Now, is there anything that consumes so much time as those anxieties which I call 'pot-boiling'?--a vulgar expression, but it puts the whole question in a nutshell. For instance, what can eat up more time than the inability to give proper security to persons from whom you seek to borrow money when, poor at the moment, you are nevertheless rich in hope?""Money,--yes, that's right," said Margaritis.
"Well, Monsieur, I am sent into the departments by a company of bankers and capitalists, who have apprehended the enormous waste which rising men of talent are thus making of time, and, consequently, of intelligence and productive ability. We have seized the idea of capitalizing for such men their future prospects, and cashing their talents by discounting--what? TIME; securing the value of it to their survivors. I may say that it is no longer a question of economizing time, but of giving it a price, a quotation; of representing in a pecuniary sense those products developed by time which presumably you possess in the region of your intellect; of representing also the moral qualities with which you are endowed, and which are, Monsieur, living forces,--as living as a cataract, as a steam-engine of three, ten, twenty, fifty horse-power. Ha! this is progress! the movement onward to a better state of things; a movement born of the spirit of our epoch; a movement essentially progressive, as I shall prove to you when we come to consider the principles involved in the logical co-ordination of the social fabric. I will now explain my meaning by literal examples, leaving aside all purely abstract reasoning, which Icall the mathematics of thought. Instead of being, as you are, a proprietor living upon your income, let us suppose that you are painter, a musician, an artist, or a poet--""I am a painter," said the lunatic.
"Well, so be it. I see you take my metaphor. You are a painter; you have a glorious future, a rich future before you. But I go still farther--"At these words the madman looked anxiously at Gaudissart, thinking he meant to go away; but was reassured when he saw that he kept his seat.
"You may even be nothing at all," said Gaudissart, going on with his phrases, "but you are conscious of yourself; you feel yourself--""I feel myself," said the lunatic.
"--you feel yourself a great man; you say to yourself, 'I will be a minister of state.' Well, then, you--painter, artist, man of letters, statesman of the future--you reckon upon your talents, you estimate their value, you rate them, let us say, at a hundred thousand crowns--""Do you give me a hundred thousand crowns?"
"Yes, Monsieur, as you will see. Either your heirs and assigns will receive them if you die, for the company contemplates that event, or you will receive them in the long run through your works of art, your writings, or your fortunate speculations during your lifetime. But, as I have already had the honor to tell you, when you have once fixed upon the value of your intellectual capital,--for it is intellectual capital,--seize that idea firmly,--intellectual--""I understand," said the fool.
"You sign a policy of insurance with a company which recognizes in you a value of a hundred thousand crowns; in you, poet--""I am a painter," said the lunatic.
