He remembered now how he had stood on this same spot,
and stared with fascinated gaze at this quadrangle of
dull houses, and pondered upon what it must feel like to
be a Rothschild--and that was only a little over a year ago!
There was no sense of fascination whatever in his
present gaze. He found himself regarding instead,
with a kind of detached curiosity, the little knot of men
in frock-coats and silk-hats who stood talking in the doorway.
It was barely ten o'clock, yet clearly business was
proceeding within. One of these persons whom he beheld
might be a Rothschild, for aught he knew; at any rate,
it was presumable that some of them were on the premises.
He had heard it said that the very head of the house listened
to quotations from the tape while he ate his luncheon,
and interrupted his conversations with the most important
of non-commercial callers, to make or refuse bargains
in shares offered by brokers who came in. What impulse
lay behind this extraordinary devotion to labour? Toward
what conceivable goal could it be striving?
To work hard and risk great things for the possession
of a fortune, in order to enjoy it afterward--he could
understand how that attracted men. But to possess
already the biggest of human fortunes, and still work--
that baffled him. He wished he knew some of those men
in there, especially if they belonged to the place.
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