As usual, at the hotel, a great many miscellaneous people showed a
burning desire to be specially nice to us. If you wish to see how
friendly and charming humanity is, just try being a well-known
millionaire for a week, and you'll learn a thing or two. Wherever
Sir Charles goes he is surrounded by charming and disinterested
people, all eager to make his distinguished acquaintance, and all
familiar with several excellent investments, or several deserving
objects of Christian charity. It is my business in life, as his
brother-in-law and secretary, to decline with thanks the excellent
investments, and to throw judicious cold water on the objects of
charity. Even I myself, as the great man's almoner, am very much
sought after. People casually allude before me to artless stories
of "poor curates in Cumberland, you know, Mr. Wentworth," or widows
in Cornwall, penniless poets with epics in their desks, and young
painters who need but the breath of a patron to open to them the
doors of an admiring Academy. I smile and look wise, while I
administer cold water in minute doses; but I never report one of
these cases to Sir Charles, except in the rare or almost unheard-of
event where I think there is really something in them.
Ever since our little adventure with the Seer at Nice, Sir Charles,
who is constitutionally cautious, had been even more careful than
usual about possible sharpers.
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