The old man almost laught, and Edward replied: "Such is the case with all life; it runs along on a narrow line between truth and fancy, between reality and delusion."
"Be it so!" cried Balthasar. "But no more of this. I was only going to tell you how I let myself be persuaded by my partner in the last year of his life to put for once into the neighbouring lottery. I did so against my own feelings; because these institutions appear to me deserving of the severest punishment. By them the state sanctions highway-robbery and murder. Even without such things ill-fated man is immoderately inflamed by the lust of gain. I had already forgotten the paltry concern, when I heard I had gained the great prize: after receiving the payment it never let me rest. What the vulgar fable of evil spirits, had come into my house along with these money-bags. This unblest sum supplied the funds for the hospital for sick old women in the valley a couple of leagues off, the building of which has been made such a merit of by senseless newspaper-scribes. What had I contributed toward it? Not even a stroke of the pen. Now you will understand how my perpetual gains, and the sums that flowed in to me from every venture, compelled me to plunge into fresh speculations, and how this has been going on year after year upon an ever-widening scale. And thus there is neither rest nor pause, until death will at length put the last full stop to the matter for this bout. Then some one else will of course begin to rave on just where I left off, and the same invisible power will perhaps meet his folly under the shape of misfortune."