And I asked myself if, on the whole, poor Ecky had
succeeded in life; if the last state of that man were
not on the whole worse than the first; and the house in
Randolph Crescent a less admirable dwelling than the
hamlet where he saw the day and grew to manhood. Here
was a consolatory thought for one who was himself a
failure.
Yes, I declare the word came in my mind; and all the
while, in another partition of the brain, I was glowing
and singing for my new-found opulence. The pile of
gold--four thousand two hundred and fifty double
eagles, seventeen thousand ugly sovereigns, twenty-one
thousand two hundred and fifty Napoleons--danced, and
rang and ran molten, and lit up life with their
effulgence, in the eye of fancy. Here were all things
made plain to me: Paradise--Paris, I mean--regained,
Carthew protected, Jim restored, the creditors...
"The creditors!" I repeated, and sank back benumbed.
It was all theirs to the last farthing: my grandfather
had died too soon to save me.
I must have somewhere a rare vein of decision.
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