One night a thief broke into the single-room apartment of French novelist Honoré de Balzac. Trying to avoid waking Balzac, the intruder quietly picked the lock on the writer's desk. Suddenly the silence was broken by a sardonic laugh from the bed, where Balzac lay watching the thief.

"Why do you laugh?" asked the thief.

"I am laughing to think what risks you take to try to find money in a desk by night where the legal owner can never find any by day."