people.
If you make him the subject of a harmless jest, he says that he cannot bear
personalities. You can please him only by deferring to him, and the only
way to manage him is by gross flattery. A Pharisee can be a gentleman, and
he isn't purely noxious like the cad; he is only unpleasant and
discouraging. He is quite impervious to argument, and only says that he
thought the principle he is contending for was generally accepted. The
Pharisee wants in a heavy way to improve the world, and thinks meanly of
it, while the cad thinks meanly of it, and wants to exploit it. The
Pharisee is a tyrant, and hates freedom; but you can often make a friend of
him by asking him a favour, if you are also prepared to be subsequently
reminded of the trouble he took to serve you.

"I think that the Pharisee perhaps does most harm in the end, because he
hates all experiments. He does harm to the young, because he makes them
dislike virtue and mistrust beauty. The cad does not corrupt--in fact, I
think he rather improves people, because he is so ugly a case of what no
one wishes to be--and it is better to hate people than to be frightened of
them. If we got a cad and a Pharisee in here, for instance, it would be
easier to get rid of the cad than the Pharisee."

"I begin to breathe more freely," said Vincent. "I had begun to review my
conscience."

Father Payne laughed. "It's all blank cartridge," he said.

XXIV

OF CONTINUANCE

I was walking with Father Payne in the garden one day of spring. I think I
liked him better when I was alone with him than I did when we were all
together. His mind expanded more tenderly and simply--less
epigrammatically. He spoke of this once to me, saying: "I am at my best
when alone; even one companion deflects me. I find myself wishing to please
him, pinching off roughnesses, perfuming truth, diplomatising. This ought
not to be, of course; and if one was not thorny, self-assertive, stupid, it
would not be so; and every companion added makes me worse, because the
strain of accommodation grows--I become vulgar and rough and boisterous in
a large circle. I often feel: 'How these young men must be hating this
gibbering and giggling ape, which after all is not really me!'" I tried to
reassure him, but he shook his head, though with a smiling air. "Barthrop
is not like that," he said, "the wise Barthrop! He is never suspicious or
hasty--he does not think it necessary to affirm; yet you are never in any