"Why, I mean," Monsieur Réquine went on finally, "I don't see any possible reason for embarking in such a terrifyingly vast enterprise as you outline; no reason for, and many against. To speak of nothing else, I am absolutely, morally certain that my cold cream" (he spoke of it with respect and affection) "would immediately deteriorate if it were manufactured on such an inhuman scale of immensity as you plan, with factories here and factories there, run by mercenary superintendents who had no personal interest in its excellence, with miscellaneous workmen picked up out of the street haphazard. Why, Mr. Hale, you have no idea of the difficulties I have, as it is, to get and train and keep serious, conscientious work-people. I should be lost without the little nucleus of old helpers who have been with our family for two generations and who set the tone of our small factory. They have the reputation and fine quality of our cold cream at heart as much as we of the family. They help us in the selection of the newer, younger workers whom we need to fill the ranks, they help us to train them in the traditions and methods of our work, and with patience teach them, one by one, year by year, the innumerable little fine secrets of manipulation which have been worked out since my grandfather began the manufacture there in that room back of you in 1836. Our recipe is much of course, it is all important; but it is not all. Oh no, Mr. Hale, it is not all. We put into our cold cream beside the recipe, patience, conscience, and pride, and that deftness of hand that only comes after years of training. You cannot buy those qualities on the market, not for any price. To think of my recipe put into the hands of money-making factory superintendents and a rabble horde of riffraff workmen!... Mr. Hale, you must excuse me for saying that I am astonished at your proposing it, you who have shown by your generous appreciation of its qualities that you are so worthy a member of our guild."
He paused, stirred from his usual equable calm and waited for an answer. But he still received none. The American was staring at him across an unfathomable chasm of differences.
Monsieur Réquine continued: "And as for me personally, I am almost as astonished that you propose it. For nothing in all the world would I enter upon such a life as you depict, owing great sums of money to begin with, for no matter how 'easy' your business credit may be made in the modern world, the fact remains that I should lie down at night and rise up in the morning conscious that thousands of men had intrusted their money to me, that I might easily, by one false step or piece of bad judgment, lose forever money which means life to poor women or old men. Such a fiery trial would shrivel me up. It would be my death, I who have never owed a penny in my life. And then what? Even with the utmost success which you hold out, I should have a life which, compared with what I now have, would be infernal; rushing to and fro over the face of the earth, away from home, my wife, my children, homeless for half the time, constantly employed in the most momentous and important decisions where in order to succeed I must give all of myself, all, _all_, my brain, my personality, my will power, my soul ... what would be left of me for leisure moments? Nothing! I should be an empty husk, drained of everything that makes me a living and a human being. But of course there would not be any leisure moments.... I see from what you so eloquently say that I would have become the slave and not the master of that invention which has come down to me from my fathers; that instead of its furnishing me and my work-people with a quiet, orderly, contented life, I should only exist to furnish it means for a wild, fantastic growth, like something in a nightmare, because a real growth is never like that, never!