Not
of great fortune evidently and appropriately. I imagine that to be
extremely rich would have appeared to him improper, outre--too blatant
altogether. And obviously, too, the fortune was not of his making. The
making of a fortune cannot be achieved without some roughness. It is
a matter of temperament. His nature was too kindly for strife. In the
course of conversation he mentioned his estate quite by the way, in
reference to that painful and alarming rheumatic affection. One year,
staying incautiously beyond the Alps as late as the middle of September,
he had been laid up for three months in that lonely country house
with no one but his valet and the caretaking couple to attend to him.
Because, as he expressed it, he "kept no establishment there." He
had only gone for a couple of days to confer with his land agent. He
promised himself never to be so imprudent in the future. The first weeks
of September would find him on the shores of his beloved gulf.
Sometimes in travelling one comes upon such lonely men, whose only
business is to wait for the unavoidable.
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