“He say nothing.  You comprehend?  He ees a profound geologian, but he also has the admiration excessif for my wife Urania.”  He stopped to kiss his hand again toward the door, and lighted a cigarette.  “The geologian would not that he should break up the happy efening of his friends by thees small detail.  He put aside his head—­so; he say, ’A leetle freestone, a leetle granite, now and then, for variety; they are building in Montgomery Street.’  I take the hint, like a wink to the horse that has gone blind.  I attach to myself part of the edifice that is erecting himself in Montgomery Street.  I crack him; I bring him home.  I sit again at the feet of my beautiful Urania, and I label him ‘Freestone,’ ‘Granite;’ but I do not say ’from Parrott’s Bank’—­eet is not necessary for our happiness.”

“And you do this sort of thing only because you think it pleases your wife?” I asked bluntly.

“My friend,” rejoined Enriquez, perching himself on the back of the sofa, and caressing his knees as he puffed his cigarette meditatively, “you have ask a conundrum.  Gif to me an easier one!  It is of truth that I make much of these thing to please Urania.  But I shall confess all.  Behold, I appear to you, my leetle brother, in my camisa—­my shirt!  I blow on myself; I gif myself away.”

He rose gravely from the sofa, and drew a small box from one of the drawers of the wardrobe.  Opening it, he discovered several specimens of gold-bearing quartz, and one or two scales of gold.  “Thees,” he said, “friend Pancho, is my own geology; for thees I am what you see.  But I say nothing to Urania; for she have much disgust of mere gold,—­of what she calls ’vulgar mining,’—­and believe me, a fear of the effect of ‘speculation’ upon my temperamento—­you comprehend my complexion, my brother?  Reflect upon it, Pancho!  I, who am the filosofo, if that I am anything!” He looked at me with great levity of eye and supernatural gravity of demeanor.  “But eet ees the jealous affection of the wife, my friend, for which I make play to her with the humble leetle pouding-stone rather than the gold quartz that affrights.”

“But what do you want with them, if you have no shares in anything and do not speculate?” I asked.

“Pardon!  That ees where you slip up, my leetle friend.”  He took from the same drawer a clasped portfolio, and unlocked it, producing half a dozen prospectuses and certificates of mining shares.  I stood aghast as I recognized the names of one or two extravagant failures of the last ten years,—­“played-out” mines that had been galvanized into deceptive life in London, Paris, and New York, to the grief of shareholders abroad and the laughter of the initiated at home.  I could scarcely keep my equanimity.  “You do not mean to say that you have any belief or interest in this rubbish?” I said quickly.

“What you call ‘rubbish,’ my good Pancho, ees the rubbish that the American speculator have dump himself upon them in the shaft, the rubbish of the advertisement, of the extravagant expense, of the salary, of the assessment, of the ‘freeze-out.’  For thees, look you, is the old Mexican mine.  My grandfather and hees father have both seen them work before you were born, and the American knew not there was gold in California.”