leave everything behind me.

"I will tell you a little story about one of my attempts, to provide for
the future. It was toward the end of the fifteenth century, about the time
that Columbus set out on his first voyage of discovery,--and you would be
surprised, considering the important results of his voyage, to know how
little sensation it caused in Europe,--that I devised a scheme by which
I thought I might establish for myself a permanent fortune. I was then
living in Genoa, and was carrying on the same business in which I am now
engaged. I was a broker, a dealer in money and commercial paper. I was
prosperous and well able to carry out the plan I had formed. This plan
was a simple one. I would purchase jewels, things easily carried about or
concealed, and which would be valuable in any country or any age; and with
this idea in my mind I spent many years in collecting valuable stones and
jewels, confining myself generally to rings, for I wished to make the bulk
of my treasures very small when compared with their value.

"About the middle of the sixteenth century I went to Rome, and took my
jewels with me. They were then a wonderfully fine collection of gems, some
of them of great antiquity and value; for, in gradually gathering them
together, the enthusiasm of the collector had possessed me, and I often
traveled far to possess myself of a valuable jewel of which I had heard.
I remained in Rome as long as I dared do so, and then prepared to set out
for Egypt, which I had not visited for a long time, and where I expected
to find interesting though depressing changes. I concluded, naturally
enough, that it would be dangerous for me to take my treasures with me,
and I could conceive of no place where it would be better to leave them
than in the Eternal City. Rome was central and comparatively easy of
access from any part of the world, and, moreover, was less liable to
changes than any other place; so I determined to leave my treasures in