It Is A Singular Tinge Of Mysticism And Credulity Which
Runs Through His Nature.
Can it be the commercial Genoese, the gambling
instinct?
For he is an authority on stocks and shares, and a passionate
card-player into the bargain. Gambling and religion go hand-in-hand
- they are but two forms of the same speculative spirit. Think of the
Poles, an entire nation of pious roulette-lovers! I have yet to meet a
full-blown agnostic who relished these hazards. The unbeliever is not
adventurous on such lines; he knows the odds against backing a winner in
heaven or earth.
Often, listening to this lawyer's acute talk and watching his uncouth
but sympathetic face, I ask myself a question, a very obvious question
hereabouts: How could you cause him to swerve from the path of duty? How
predispose him in your favour? Sacks of gold would be unavailing: that
is certain. He would wave them aside, not in righteous Anglo-Saxon
indignation, but with a smile of tolerance at human weakness. To
simulate clerical leanings? He is too sharp; he would probably be vexed,
not at your attempt to deceive, but at the implication that you took him
for a fool. A good tip on the stock exchange? It might go a little way,
if artfully tendered. Perhaps an apt and unexpected quotation from the
pages of some obsolete jurist - the intellectual method of approach; for
there is a kinship, a kind of freemasonry, between all persons of
intelligence, however antagonistic their moral outlook.
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