Your very smartness assists me; for I admit you
_are_ smart. As a regular financier, I allow, I couldn't hold a
candle to you. But in my humbler walk of life I know just how to
utilise you. I lead you on, where you think you are going to gain some
advantage over others; and by dexterously playing upon your love of
a good bargain, your innate desire to best somebody else--I succeed
in besting you. There, sir, you have the philosophy of our mutual
relations."
He bowed and raised his cap. Charles looked at him and cowered. Yes,
genius as he is, he positively cowered. "And do you mean to say,"
he burst out, "you intend to go on so bleeding me?"
The Colonel smiled a bland smile. "Sir Charles Vandrift," he
answered, "I called you just now the goose that lays the golden
eggs. You may have thought the metaphor a rude one. But you _are_
a goose, you know, in certain relations. Smartest man on the Stock
Exchange, I readily admit; easiest fool to bamboozle in the
open country that ever I met with. You fail in one thing--the
perspicacity of simplicity. For that reason, among others, I have
chosen to fasten upon you. Regard me, my dear sir, as a microbe of
millionaires, a parasite upon capitalists. You know the old rhyme:
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And these again have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum!
Well, that's just how I view myself.
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