It is the same with that ugly entanglement before the Renaissance, from which, alas, most memories of the Middle Ages are derived.  Louis XI was a very patient and practical man of the world; but (like many good business men) he was mad.  The morbidity of the intriguer and the torturer clung about everything he did, even when it was right.  And just as the great Empire of Antoninus and Aurelius never wiped out Nero, so even the silver splendour of the latter saints, such as Vincent de Paul, has never painted out for the British public the crooked shadow of Louis XI.  Whenever the unhealthy man has been on top, he has left a horrible savour that humanity finds still in its nostrils.  Now in our time the unhealthy man is on top; but he is not the man mad on sex, like Nero; or mad on statecraft, like Louis XI; he is simply the man mad on money.  Our tyrant is not the satyr or the torturer; but the miser.

The modern miser has changed much from the miser of legend and anecdote; but only because he has grown yet more insane.  The old miser had some touch of the human artist about him in so far that he collected gold—­a substance that can really be admired for itself, like ivory or old oak.  An old man who picked up yellow pieces had something of the simple ardour, something of the mystical materialism, of a child who picks out yellow flowers.  Gold is but one kind of coloured clay, but coloured clay can be very beautiful.  The modern idolater of riches is content with far less genuine things.  The glitter of guineas is like the glitter of buttercups, the chink of pelf is like the chime of bells, compared with the dreary papers and dead calculations which make the hobby of the modern miser.

The modern millionaire loves nothing so lovable as a coin.  He is content sometimes with the dead crackle of notes; but far more often with the mere repetition of noughts in a ledger, all as like each other as eggs to eggs.  And as for comfort, the old miser could be comfortable, as many tramps and savages are, when he was once used to being unclean.  A man could find some comfort in an unswept attic or an unwashed shirt.  But the Yankee millionaire can find no comfort with five telephones at his bed-head and ten minutes for his lunch.  The round coins in the miser’s stocking were safe in some sense.  The round noughts in the millionaire’s ledger are safe in no sense; the same fluctuation which excites him with their increase depresses him with their diminution.  The miser at least collects coins; his hobby is numismatics.  The man who collects noughts collects nothings.