Yet WHY should I not rise from the dead? I should require at first but to go cautiously and patiently and the rest would follow. I should require but to put a check upon my nature for one hour, and my fortunes would be changed entirely.
Yes, my nature is my weak point.
I have only to remember what happened to me some months ago at Roulettenberg, before my final ruin.
What a notable instance that was of my capacity for resolution! On the occasion in question I had lost everything—everything; yet, just as I was leaving the Casino, I heard another gulden give a rattle in my pocket!
"Perhaps I shall need it for a meal," I thought to myself; but a hundred paces further on, I changed my mind, and returned.
That gulden I staked upon manque—and there is something in the feeling that, though one is alone, and in a foreign land, and far from one's own home and friends, and ignorant of whence one's next meal is to come, one is nevertheless staking one's very last coin!
Well, I won the stake, and in twenty minutes had left the Casino with a hundred and seventy gulden in my pocket!
That is a fact, and it shows what a last remaining gulden can do....
But what if my heart had failed me, or I had shrunk from making up my mind? ...
No: tomorrow all shall be ended!