me. You have heard of him whose misery (the gratification of his own foolish wish) was, that he turned every thing he touched, to gold. The curse of my existence, and the realization of my own mad desire, is that by the golden standard which I bear about me, I am doomed to try the metal of all other men, and find it false and hollow."
Mr. Pecksniff shook his head, and said, "You think so."
"Oh yes," cried the old man, "I think so! and in your telling me 'I think so,' I recognise the true unworldly ring of your metal. I tell you, man," he added, with increasing bitterness, "that I have gone, a rich man, among people of all grades and kinds; relatives, friends, and strangers"; among people in whom, when I was poor, I had confidence, and justly, for they never once deceived me then, or, to me, wronged each other. But I have never found one nature, no, not one, in which, being wealthy and alone, I was not forced to detect the latent corruption that lay hid within it, waiting for such as I to bring it forth. Treachery, deceit, and low design; hatred of competitors, real or fancied, for my favor; meanness, falsehood, baseness, and servility; or," and here he looked closely in his cousin's eyes, "or an assumption of honest independence, almost worse than all; these are the beauties which my wealth has brought to light. Brother against brother, child against parent, friends treading on the faces of friends, this is the social company by which my way has been attended. There are stories told—they may be true or false—of rich men, who, in the garb of poverty, have found out virtue and rewarded it. They were dolts and idiots for their pains. They should have made the search in their own characters. They should have shown themselves fit objects to be robbed and preyed upon and plotted against, and adulated by any knaves, who, but for joy, would have spat upon their coffins when they died their dupes; and then their search would have ended as mine has done, and they would be what I am."
Mr. Pecksniff, not at all knowing what it might be best to say, in the momentary pause which ensued upon these remarks, made an elaborate demonstration of intending to deliver something very oracular indeed: trusting to the certainty of the old man interrupting him, before he should utter a word. Nor was he mistaken, for Martin Chuzzlewit having taken breath, went on to say:
"Hear me to an end; judge what profit you are like to gain from any repetition of this visit and leave me. I have so corrupted and changed the nature of all those who have ever attended on me, by breeding avaricious plots and hopes within them; I have engendered such domestic strife and discord, by tarrying even with members of my own family; I have been such a lighted torch in peaceful homes, kindling up all the bad gases and vapours in their moral atmosphere, which, but for me, might have proved harmless to the end; that I have, I may say, fled from all who knew me, and taking refuge in secret places, have lived, of late, the life of one who is hunted. The young girl whom you just now saw—what! your eye lightens when I talk of her! You hate her already, do you!"
"Upon my word, sir!" said Mr. Pecksniff, laying his hand upon his breast, and dropping his eyelids.
