“Let us talk, monsieur.”
The three women went into Madame Margaritis’ room, leaving the door open so as to hear all that went on, and intervene in case of need. Hardly were they seated when Monsieur Vernier came in quietly from the vineyard, and made them let him in through the window without a sound.
“You were in business, monsieur?” Gaudissart began.
“Public business,” replied Margaritis, interrupting him. “I pacified Calabria when Murat was King.”
“Heyday, he has been in Calabria now!” said Vernier in a whisper.
“Oh, indeed!” said Gaudissart. “Then, monsieur, we cannot fail to come to an understanding.”
“I am listening,” replied Margaritis, settling himself in the attitude of a man sitting for his portrait.
“Monsieur,” said Gaudissart, fidgeting with his watch key, which he twisted round and round without thinking of what he was doing, with a regular rotary twirl which engaged the madman’s attention, and perhaps helped to keep him quiet; “monsieur, if you were not a man of superior intelligence”—Margaritis bowed—“I should restrict myself to setting forth the material advantages of this concern; but its psychological value is worthy of your attention. Mark me! Of all forms of social wealth, time is the most precious; to save time is to grow rich, is it not? Now is there anything which takes up more time in our lives than anxiety as to what I may call boiling the pot—a homely metaphor, but clearly stating the question? Or is there anything which consumes more time than the lack of a guarantee to offer as security to those of whom you ask money when, though impecunious for a time, you yet are rich in prospects?”
“Money—you have come to the point.”
“Well, then, monsieur, I am the emissary to the departments of a company of bankers and capitalists, who have perceived what enormous loss of time, and consequently of productive intelligence and activity, is thus entailed on men with the future before them. Now, the idea has occurred to us that, to such men, we may capitalize the future, we may discount their talents, by discounting what?—why, their time, and securing its value to their heirs. This is not merely to economize time; it is to price it, to value it, to represent in a pecuniary form the products you may expect to obtain in a certain unknown time by representing the moral qualities with which you are gifted, and which are, monsieur, a living force, like a waterfall, or a steam engine of three, ten, twenty, fifty horsepower. This is progress, a great movement towards a better order of things, a movement due to the energy of our age—an essentially progressive age, as I can prove to you when we come to the conception of a more logical coordination of social interests.
“I will explain myself by tangible instances. I quit the purely abstract argument which we, in our line, call the mathematics of ideas. Supposing that instead of being a man of property, living on your dividends, you are a painter, a musician, a poet—”
“I am a painter,” the other put in by way of parenthesis.
“Very good, so be it, since you take my metaphor; you are a painter, you have a great future before you. But I am going further—”
At those words the lunatic studied Gaudissart uneasily to see if he meant to go away, but was reassured on seeing him remain seated.
“You are nothing at all,” Gaudissart went on, “but you feel yourself—”
“I feel myself,” said Margaritis.
“You say to yourself, ‘I shall be a Minister’; very good. You, the painter, you, the artist, the man of letters, the future Minister, you calculate your prospects, you value them at so much—you estimate them, let us say—at a hundred thousand crowns—”
“And you have brought me a hundred thousand crowns?” said the lunatic.
“Yes, monsieur, you will see. Either your heirs will get them without fail, in the event of your death, since the company pledges itself to pay, or, if you live, you get them by your works of art or your fortunate speculations. Nay, if you have made a mistake, you can begin all over again. But, when once you have fixed the value, as I have had the honor of explaining to you, of your intellectual capital—for it is intellectual capital, bear that clearly in mind, monsieur—”
“I understand,” said the madman.
“You sign a policy of insurance with this company, which credits you with the value of a hundred thousand francs—you, the painter—”
“I am a painter,” said Margaritis.
“You, the musician, the Minister—and promises to pay that sum to your family, your heirs, if, in consequence of your demise, the hopes of the income to be derived from your intellectual capital should be lost. The payment of the premium is thus all that is needed to consolidate your—”
“Your cashbox,” said the madman, interrupting him.
“Well, of course, monsieur; I see that you understand business.”
“Yes,” said Margaritis, “I was the founder of the Banque Territoriale, Rue des Fossés-Montmartre in Paris, in 1798.”
“For,” Gaudissart went on, “in order to repay the intellectual capital with which each of us credits himself, must not all who insure pay a certain premium—three percent, annually three percent? And thus, by paying a very small sum, a mere nothing, you are protecting your family against the disastrous effects of your death.”
“But I am alive,” objected the lunatic.
“Ah, yes, and if you live to be old—that is the objection commonly raised, the objection of the vulgar, and you must see that if we had not anticipated and annihilated it, we should be unworthy to become—what? What are we, in fact?—The bookkeepers of the Great Bank of Intellect.
“Monsieur, I do not say this to you; but wherever I go, I meet with men who pretend to teach something new, to bring forward some fresh argument against those who have grown pale with studying the business—on my word of honor, it is contemptible! However, the world is made so, and I have no hope of reforming it.—Your objection, monsieur, is absurd—”
“
