“But I live,” said the fool.

“Ah! yes; you mean if you should live long?  That is the usual objection,—­a vulgar prejudice.  I fully agree that if we had not foreseen and demolished it we might feel we were unworthy of being —­what?  What are we, after all?  Book-keepers in the great Bureau of Intellect.  Monsieur, I don’t apply these remarks to you, but I meet on all sides men who make it a business to teach new ideas and disclose chains of reasoning to people who turn pale at the first word.  On my word of honor, it is pitiable!  But that’s the way of the world, and I don’t pretend to reform it.  Your objection, Monsieur, is really sheer nonsense.”

“Why?” asked the lunatic.

“Why?—­this is why:  because, if you live and possess the qualities which are estimated in your policy against the chances of death,—­now, attend to this—­”

“I am attending.”

“Well, then, you have succeeded in life; and you have succeeded because of the said insurance.  You doubled your chances of success by getting rid of the anxieties you were dragging about with you in the shape of wife and children who might otherwise be left destitute at your death.  If you attain this certainty, you have touched the value of your intellectual capital, on which the cost of insurance is but a trifle,—­a mere trifle, a bagatelle.”

“That’s a fine idea!”

“Ah! is it not, Monsieur?” cried Gaudissart.  “I call this enterprise the exchequer of beneficence; a mutual insurance against poverty; or, if you like it better, the discounting, the cashing, of talent.  For talent, Monsieur, is a bill of exchange which Nature gives to the man of genius, and which often has a long time to run before it falls due.”

“That is usury!” cried Margaritis.

“The devil! he’s keen, the old fellow!  I’ve made a mistake,” thought Gaudissart, “I must catch him with other chaff.  I’ll try humbug No. 1.  Not at all,” he said aloud, “for you who—­”

“Will you take a glass of wine?” asked Margaritis.

“With pleasure,” replied Gaudissart.

“Wife, give us a bottle of the wine that is in the puncheons.  You are here at the very head of Vouvray,” he continued, with a gesture of the hand, “the vineyard of Margaritis.”

The maid-servant brought glasses and a bottle of wine of the vintage of 1819.  The good-man filled a glass with circumspection and offered it to Gaudissart, who drank it up.

“Ah, you are joking, Monsieur!” exclaimed the commercial traveller.  “Surely this is Madeira, true Madeira?”

“So you think,” said the fool.  “The trouble with our Vouvray wine is that it is neither a common wine, nor a wine that can be drunk with the entremets.  It is too generous, too strong.  It is often sold in Paris adulterated with brandy and called Madeira.  The wine-merchants buy it up, when our vintage has not been good enough for the Dutch and Belgian markets, to mix it with wines grown