The note had suddenly acquired a supernatural power over him.  Might there not be something living in it?  The figures surrounded by wide rings were like magnetic eyes.  The boy kissed them all and whispered:  “I should like to have many, very many like you.”

He began to have all sorts of thoughts about the note, and why Halfvorson did not inquire for it.  Perhaps it was not Halfvorson’s?  Perhaps it had lain in the shop for a long time?  Perhaps it no longer had any owner?

Thoughts are contagious.—­At supper Halfvorson had begun to speak of money and moneyed-men.  He told Petter Nord about all the poor boys who had amassed riches.  He began with Whittington and ended with Astor and Jay Gould.  Halfvorson knew all their histories; he knew how they had striven and denied themselves; what they had discovered and ventured.  He grew eloquent when he began on such tales.  He lived through the sufferings of those young people; he followed them in their successes; he rejoiced in their victories.  Petter Nord listened quite fascinated.

Halfvorson was stone deaf, but that was no obstacle to conversation, for he read by the lips everything that was said.  On the other hand, he could not hear his own voice.  It rolled out as strangely monotonous as the roar of a distant waterfall.  But his peculiar way of speaking made everything he said sink in, so that one could not escape from it for many days.  Poor Petter Nord!

“What is most needed to become rich,” said Halfvorson, “is the foundation.  But it cannot be earned.  Take note that they all have found it in the street or discovered it between the lining and cloth of a coat which they had bought at a pawnbroker’s sale; or that it had been won at cards, or had been given to them in alms by a beautiful and charitable lady.  After they had once found that blessed coin, everything had gone well with them.  The stream of gold welled from it as from a fountain.  The first thing that is necessary, Petter Nord, is the foundation.”

Halfvorson’s voice sounded ever fainter and fainter.  Young Petter Nord sat in a kind of trance and saw endless vistas of gold before him.  On the dining table rose great piles of ducats; the floor heaved white with silver, and the indistinct patterns on the dirty wall-paper changed into banknotes, big as handkerchiefs.  But directly before his eyes fluttered the fifty-crown note, surrounded by wide rings, luring him like the most beautiful eyes.  “Who can know,” smiled the eyes, “perhaps the fifty crowns up on the shelf is just such a foundation?”

“Mark my words,” said Halfvorson, “that, after the foundation, two things are necessary for those who wish to reach the heights.  Work, untiring work, Petter Nord, is one; and the other is renunciation.  Renunciation of play and love, of talk and laughter, of morning sleep and evening strolls.  In truth, in truth, two things are necessary for him who would win fortune.  One is called work, and the other renunciation.”