The Embezzler by Louis Auchincloss Page B

millions."
    "Does he so? And if I was always thinking of dollars, I suppose somebody might pinch a million."
    "Yes, you have to be careful. Father says everyone thinks a man who was born rich must be a fool."
    Mr. de Grasse's lips just parted in a thin smile. "I confess I have sometimes taken advantage of that very prejudice. On occasion it can be extremely valuable to be thought a fool."
    It amused him to find out what Bar Harbor thought of him, and I was very candid. From that time on he would invite me up of a rainy afternoon to read in the big library where he did his work and where there was a bookcase of excellent boys' books that had belonged to his oldest son, who had died. Sometimes we would read silently to ourselves and sometimes talk. Mr. de Grasse was a novelist
manqué.
He could tell wonderful stories of his father and grandfather, of clipper ships and the Orient, of the West and wars with the Indians, of the building of railroads and the laying of cables. We were both romantics. And then, too, we were both nature lovers and kept bird lists and, despite his aversion to all forms of exercise, I once got him halfway down his own hill in quest of warblers.
    As I grew older I began to anticipate the inevitable time when Mr. de Grasse would become bored with me. I had a sure instinct in such matters, and I knew that my youthful liveliness would not always make up to him for my lack of a genuinely philosophical mind. I kept him as much as possible on the particular and away from the general. In history I liked to talk about the kings, in religion, the martyrs and in economics, the great robber barons whom Mr. de Grasse had known. Not for me was the colosseum of general ideas. When I complained to him that I had been born too late in American history for true adventure, he chilled me a bit with the sarcasm of his sympathy.
    "Yes, I can see, Guy, that you should feel that. The slaves have all been freed, and the West has been won. The railroads are built and every beggar has his flush toilet. But I think you may find, if you come to work for me, that there's still some adventure left. You were born to the great age of the dollar, of the speculator, of high finance! It should take us a century to plunder our new land, and don't worry, the banker will be in the vanguard. Ah, yes, you look askance at my levity. That's right: young men should be serious. And it's a very serious thing that no matter what virgin forest any pest of a speculator may wish to cut down or what stinking mill he may wish to put up on its site, he will always find a banker to give him his money!"
    "But not you, sir!"
    "No, Guy, not me." He shook his head almost wearily. "But I am a privileged person. At de Grasse we are small enough and old enough to do our own picking and choosing. It is not really a moral choice. It's more that life's too bloody short not to do the worthwhile thing. That's a rich man's luxury."
    How he inspired me! The detached contemplation, the bemused induction, the ultimate decision taken in silence and calm; that was how I pictured him at work. A great, grave doctor by the bedside of our economy, finger on pulse, meditating a transfusion. Was it wrong of me to have plotted to share that with Rex? I never fooled myself that I was Mr. de Grasse's intellectual equal, but I was convinced that Rex was. It seemed logical to suppose that if I brought him into my relationship with the older man, he might fill in its empty corners, and indeed for a time it worked out just this way. The start, however, was inauspicious.
    We were asked to lunch at the big house on the first Sunday after Rex's arrival. I persuaded my friend that this was not really "social life," so he reluctantly went. Our host, unfortunately, was in one of his sullen, silent moods, and Rex plunged into a similar one in the unfamiliar atmosphere of the dining room with its yellow and brown clothed walls, its dark angry lithographs of bears and lions in their native