Have you realized on what a slender thread all this wealth depends? Once let that break, and all is gone; your treasure is but dust and ashes.

How so?

Why, it is not clear how long this life of affluence is to last. Who knows? You may be sitting one day at your solid gold table, just putting out your hand for a slice of that peacock or capon, when, at that very moment, off flies animula vagula, and Adimantus after her, leaving his all a prey to crows and vultures, Need I enumerate instances? There have been rich men who have died before they knew what it was to be rich; others have lived to be robbed of their possessions by some malign spirit who waits uponwealth. The cases of Croesus and Polycrates are familiar to you. Their riches were greater far than yours; yet at one stroke they lost all.