love gold? You know what I have braved to acquire it? To reckon up the sums
I possessed, to see them doubled by my avarice, to endure every privation,
and know myself the master of a treasure--it was my joy, my happiness. Yes,
to possess, not to enjoy, but to theorize, was my life. One month since, if
they had said to me, 'Between your fortune and your head choose,' I would
have given up my head."

"But of what use to have money when one dies?"

"Ask me, then, 'Of what use to possess it, when one makes no use of what
one possesses?' I, a millionaire, did I lead the life of a millionaire? No:
I lived like a poor beggar. I loved, then, to possess, for possession's
sake."

"But once more I ask you, of what use is it when one dies?"

"To the possessing! Yes, to enjoy that even to the last moment for which
you have braved privations, infamy, the scaffold; yes, to say once more,
the head under the ax, 'I possess!' Oh! do you see, death is sweet compared
to the torments that are endured on seeing one's self during life
dispossessed, as I am, of all that I have amassed at the price of so much
pain, so much danger! Oh! to say, at each moment of the day, 'I, who had
more than a million--I, who have endured every privation to preserve it--I,
who in ten years would have doubled it, tripled it--I have no longer
anything. It is cruel! it is to die, not each day, but each moment of the
day. Yes, to this horrible agony, which may endure for years, perhaps, I
would have preferred death a thousand times. Once more, I could have said
in dying, 'I possess.'"

Polidori looked at his accomplice with profound astonishment.