If I had paid seventy pounds to get the thing, I should not have stuck at seven hundred to be safely rid of it.
And if the chaise was a danger, what an anxiety was the despatch-box and its golden cargo! I had never had a care but to draw my pay and spend it; I had lived happily in the regiment, as in my father's house, fed by the great Emperor's commissariat as by ubiquitous doves of Elijah--or, my faith! if anything went wrong with the commissariat, helping myself with the best grace in the world from the next peasant! And now I began to feel at the same time the burthen of riches and the fear of destitution.
There were ten thousand pounds in the despatch-box, but I reckoned in French money, and had two hundred and fifty thousand agonies; I kept it under my hand all day, I dreamed of it at night.

In the inns, I was afraid to go to dinner and afraid to go to sleep.

When I walked up a hill I durst not leave the doors of the claret-coloured chaise.
Sometimes I would change the disposition of the funds: there were days when I carried as much as five or six thousand pounds on my own person, and only the residue continued to voyage in the treasure-chest--days when I bulked all over like my cousin, crackled to a touch with bank paper, and had my pockets weighed to bursting-point with sovereigns.

And there were other days when I wearied of the thing--or grew ashamed of it--and put all the money back where it had come from: there let it take its chance, like better people! In short, I set Rowley a poor example of consistency, and in philosophy, none at all.
Little he cared! All was one to him so long as he was amused, and I never knew any one amused more easily.

He was thrillingly interested in life, travel, and his own melodramatic position.