"Ah! well, yes!" he exclaimed--"yes, all that you have
just heard is true. I was sinking, and I tried to save myself as
best I could. Beggars cannot be choosers; I staked my all upon a
single die. If I had won, you would have been at my feet; but I
have lost and you spurn me. Cowards! hypocrites! that you are,
insult me if you like, but tell me how many among you all are
sufficiently pure and upright to have a right to despise me! Are
there a hundred among you? are there even fifty?"
A tempest of hisses momentarily drowned his voice, but as soon as
the uproar had ceased, he resumed, sneeringly: "Ah! the truth
wounds you, my dear friends. Pray, don't pretend to be so
distressingly virtuous! I was ruined--that is the long and short
of it. But what man of you is not embarrassed? Who among you
finds his income sufficient? Which one of you is not encroaching
upon his capital? And when you have come to your last louis, you
will do what I have done, or something worse. Do not deny it, for
not one among you has a more uncompromising conscience, more moral
firmness, or more generous aspirations than I once possessed. You
are pursuing what I pursued. You desire what I desired--a life of
luxury, brief if it must be, but happy--a life of gayety, wild
excitement, and dissipation. You, too, have a passion for
pleasure and gambling, race-horses, and notorious women, a table
always bountifully spread, glasses ever overflowing with wine, all
the delights of luxury, and everything that gratifies your vanity!
But an abyss of shame awaits you at the end of it all.
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