Tolstoy, in one of the greatest of short stories gives us an unforgettable picture of a man whose soul had been enslaved by the lust for money. He was offered as much land as he could walk around between sunrise and sunset for free, but with one stipulation that, unless he was back at the starting-point when the sun went down, he would lose his life. As the sun began to rise he set off, but such was his greed that he tried to include in his prospective estate more than he could manage to walk around in the stipulated time. As the sun set, he gathered all his strength and rushed to the starting-point, and, leaping to reach it, fell down dead.

‘And all he needed’, wrote the great story-teller, ‘was six feet by two’.