has not been
despoiled and _exploite_. Apparently they have all been bunglers. I
maintain that something is to be done with him still. But one must work
in obedience to certain definite laws. Doctor Jones, his physician,
tells me that in point of fact he has had for the past ten years an
unbroken series of favorites, _proteges_, heirs presumptive; but that
each, in turn, by some fatally false movement, has spilled his pottage.
The doctor declares, moreover, that they were mostly very common people.
Gradually the old man seems to have developed a preference for two or
three strictly exquisite intimates, over a throng of your vulgar
pensioners. His tardy literary schemes, too--fruit of his all but
sapless senility--have absorbed more and more of his time and attention.
The end of it all is, therefore, that Theodore and I have him quite to
ourselves, and that it behooves us to hold our porringers straight.

Poor, pretentious old simpleton! It's not his fault, after all, that he
fancies himself a great little man. How are you to judge of the stature
of mankind when men have forever addressed you on their knees? Peace and
joy to his innocent fatuity! He believes himself the most rational of
men; in fact, he's the most superstitious. He fancies himself a
philosopher, an inquirer, a discoverer. He has not yet discovered that
he is a humbug, that Theodore is a prig, and that I am an adventurer. He
prides himself on his good manners, his urbanity, his knowing a rule of
conduct for every occasion in life. My private impression is that his
skinny old bosom contains unsuspected treasures of impertinence. He
takes his stand on his speculative audacity--his direct, undaunted gaze
at the universe; in truth, his mind is haunted by a hundred dingy
old-world spectres and theological phantasms. He imagines himself one of
the most solid of men; he is essentially one of the hollowest. He thinks
himself ardent, impulsive, passionate, magnanimous--capable of boundless
enthusiasm for an idea or a sentiment. It is clear to me that on no
occasion of disinterested action can he ever have done anything in
time. He believes, finally, that he has drained the cup of life to the
dregs; that he has known, in its bitterest intensity, every emotion of
which the human spirit is capable; that he has loved, struggled,
suffered. Mere vanity, all of it. He has never loved any one but
himself; he has never suffered from anything but an undigested supper or
an