"You did see him then?" I said with some curiosity.

"I did. Strange, isn't it? It was only once, but as I sat with the

distressed Fyne who had suddenly resuscitated his name buried in my

memory with other dead labels of the past, I may say I saw him again, I

saw him with great vividness of recollection, as he appeared in the days

of his glory or splendour. No! Neither of these words will fit his

success. There was never any glory or splendour about that figure. Well,

let us say in the days when he was, according to the majority of the

daily press, a financial force working for the improvement of the

character of the people. I'll tell you how it came about.

At that time I used to know a podgy, wealthy, bald little man having

chambers in the Albany; a financier too, in his way, carrying out

transactions of an intimate nature and of no moral character; mostly with

young men of birth and expectations--though I dare say he didn't withhold

his ministrations from elderly plebeians either. He was a true democrat;

he would have done business (a sharp kind of business) with the devil

himself. Everything was fly that came into his web. He received the

applicants in an alert, jovial fashion which was quite surprising. It

gave relief without giving too much confidence, which was just as well

perhaps. His business was transacted in an apartment furnished like a

drawing-room, the walls hung with several brown, heavily-framed, oil

paintings. I don't know if they were good, but they were big, and with

their elaborate, tarnished gilt-frames had a melancholy dignity. The man

himself sat at a shining, inlaid writing table which looked like a rare

piece from a museum of art; his chair had a high, oval, carved back,

upholstered in faded tapestry; and these objects made of the costly black

Havana cigar, which he rolled incessantly from the middle to the left

corner of his mouth and back again, an inexpressibly cheap and nasty

object. I had to see him several times in the interest of a poor devil

so unlucky that he didn't even have a more competent friend than myself

to speak for him at a very difficult time in his life.

I don't know at what hour my private financier began his day, but he used

to give one appointments at unheard of times: such as a quarter to eight

in the morning, for instance. On arriving one found him busy at that

marvellous writing table, looking very fresh and alert, exhaling a faint

fragrance of scented soap and with the cigar already well alight. You

may believe that I entered on my mission with many unpleasant

forebodings; but there was in that fat, admirably washed, little man such

a profound contempt for mankind that it amounted to a species of good

nature; which, unlike the milk of genuine kindness, was never in danger

of turning sour. Then, once, during a pause in business, while we were

waiting for the production of a document for which he had sent (perhaps

to the cellar?) I happened to remark, glancing round the room, that I had

never seen so many fine things assembled together out of a collection.

Whether this was unconscious diplomacy on my part, or not, I shouldn't

like to say--but the remark was true enough, and it pleased him

extremely. "It is a collection," he said emphatically. "Only I live

right in it, which most collectors don't. But I see that you know what

you are looking at. Not many people who come here on business do. Stable

fittings are more in their way."




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