CHAPTER X.
AT BLAFARD'S There comes now and then to the surface of our modern civilisation one of those great and good men who, unconscious, like all great and good men, of the goodness and greatness of their work, leave behind a lasting memorial of themselves before they go bankrupt.
It was so with the founder of the Stoics' Club.
He came to the surface in the year 187-, with nothing in the world but his clothes and an idea.

In a single year he had floated the Stoics' Club, made ten thousand pounds, lost more, and gone down again.
The Stoics' Club lived after him by reason of the immortal beauty of his idea.

In 1891 it was a strong and corporate body, not perhaps quite so exclusive as it had been, but, on the whole, as smart and aristocratic as any club in London, with the exception of that one or two into which nobody ever got.

The idea with which its founder had underpinned the edifice was, like all great ideas, simple, permanent, and perfect--so simple, permanent, and perfect that it seemed amazing no one had ever thought of it before.

It was embodied in No.