"Give me a book that is something like life, and I'll read it," he exclaimed impatiently; "but I can't swallow the high-flown prosings of impossibly virtuous inanities."
One day, indeed, he had been struck by the power of a book, a book written by a certain Frenchman called Balzac. He had been riveted by the hideous cynicism, the supreme power of penetration into the vilest corners of wicked hearts; and he flung the book from him at last with an expression of unmitigated admiration.
"That man knows his fellows," he cried, "and is not hypocrite enough to conceal his knowledge, or to trick out his puppets in the tinsel and rags of false sentiment in order that critics and public may cry, 'See, what noble instincts, what generous impulses, what unbounded sympathy for his fellow-creatures this man has!' This Frenchman is an artist, and is not afraid to face the difficulties of his art. What a scoundrel this Philippe Bridau is! And after wallowing in the gutter, he lives to bespatter his virtuous brother with the mire from his carriage wheels. That is _real_ life. Your English novelist would have made his villain hang himself with the string of his waistcoat in a condemned cell, while his amiable hero was declared heir to a dukedom and forty thousand a year. But this fellow Balzac knows better than that."
The days had passed when Mr. Sheldon had leisure to read Balzac. He read nothing but the newspapers now, and in the newspapers he read very little more than the money articles and such political news as seemed likely to affect the money-market. There is no such soul-absorbing pursuit as the race which men run whose goal is the glittering Temple of Plutus. The golden apples which tempted Atalanta to slacken her pace are always rolling _before_ the modern runner, and the greed of gain lends the wings of Hermes to his feet. Mr. Sheldon had sighed for pleasures sometimes in the days of his Bloomsbury martyrdom. He had sat by his open window on sultry summer evenings, smoking his solitary cigar, and thinking moodily of all the pleasant resting-places from which other men were looking out at that golden western sky, deepening into crimson and melting into purples which even the London smoke could not obscure. He had sat alone, thinking of jovial parties lounging in the bow-windows of Greenwich taverns, with cool green hock-glasses and pale amber wine, and a litter of fruit and flowers on the table before them, while the broad river flowed past them with all the glory of the sunset on the rippling water, and one black brig standing sharply out against the yellow sky. He had thought of Richmond, and the dashing young men who drive there every summer in drags, with steel chain and bar clanking and glittering in front of the team, and two solemn grooms with folded arms seated stiff and statue-like behind. He had thought of Epsom, and the great Derby mob; and all of those golden goblets of pleasure which prosperous manhood drains to the very dregs. He had fancied the enjoyments which would be his if ever he were rich enough to pay for them. And now he was able to afford all such pleasures he cared nothing for them; for the ecstasy of making money seemed better than any masculine dissipation or delight. He did sometimes dine at Greenwich. He knew the _menus_ of the different taverns by heart, and had discovered that they were all alike vanity and indigestion; but he never seated himself at one of those glistening little tables, or deliberated with an obsequious waiter over the mysteries of the wine _carte_, without a settled purpose to be served by the eating of the dinner, and a definite good to be achieved by the wine he ordered. He gave many such entertainments at home and abroad; but they were all given to men who were likely to be useful to him--to rich men, or the toadies and hangers-on of rich men, the grand viziers of the sultans of the money-market. Such a thing as pleasure or hospitality pure and simple had no place in the plan of Mr. Sheldon's life. The race in which he was running was not to be won by a loiterer. The golden apples were always rolling on before the runner; and woe be to him who turned away from the course to dally with the flowers or loiter by the cool streams that beautified the wayside.