Theodore
hates the said Maximus. Theodore has been seeking for the past three
months to see his name written, last but not least, in a certain
testamentary document: "Finally, I bequeath to my dear young friend,
Theodore Lisle, in return for invaluable services and unfailing
devotion, the bulk of my property, real and personal, consisting of--"
(hereupon follows an exhaustive enumeration of houses, lands, public
securities, books, pictures, horses, and dogs). It is for this that he
has toiled, and watched, and prayed; submitted to intellectual weariness
and spiritual torture; accommodated himself to levity, blasphemy, and
insult. For this he sets his teeth and tightens his grasp; for this
he'll fight. Dear me, it's an immense weight off one's mind! There are
nothing, then, but vulgar, common laws; no sublime exceptions, no
transcendent anomalies. Theodore's a knave, a hypo--nay, nay; stay,
irreverent hand!--Theodore's a _man_! Well, that's all I want. _He_
wants fight--he shall have it. Have I got, at last, my simple, natural
emotion?

21st.--I have lost no time. This evening, late, after I had heard
Theodore go to his room (I had left the library early, on the pretext of
having letters to write), I repaired to Mr. Sloane, who had not yet gone
to bed, and informed him I should be obliged to leave him at once, and
pick up a subsistence somehow in New York. He felt the blow; it brought
him straight down on his marrow-bones. He went through the whole gamut
of his arts and graces; he blustered, whimpered, entreated, flattered.
He tried to drag in Theodore's name; but this I, of course, prevented.
But, finally, why, _why_, WHY, after all my promises of fidelity, must I
thus cruelly desert him? Then came my trump card: I have spent my last
penny; while I stay, I'm a beggar. The remainder of this extraordinary
scene I have no power to describe: how the _bonhomme_, touched,
inflamed, inspired, by the thought of my destitution, and at the same
time annoyed, perplexed, bewildered at having to commit himself to doing
anything for me, worked himself into a nervous frenzy which deprived him
of a clear sense of the value of his words and his actions; how I,
prompted by the irresistible spirit of my desire to leap astride of his
weakness and ride it hard to the goal of my dreams, cunningly contrived
to keep his spirit at the fever-point, so that strength and reason and
resistance should burn themselves out. I shall probably never aga