roiques,' which M. Thierry truly attributes to him. If
there was, as M. Thierry truly says, another nature struggling within
him--is there not such in every man? And are not the struggles the more
painful, the temptations more dangerous, the inconsistencies too often
the more shameful, the capacities for evil as well as for good, more
huge, just in proportion to the native force and massiveness of the soul?
The doctrine may seem dangerous. It is dangerous, like many truths; and
woe to those who, being unlearned and unstable, wrest it to their own
destruction; and presume upon it to indulge their own passions under
Byronic excuses of 'genius,' or 'muscular Christianity.' But it is true
nevertheless: so at least the Bible tells us, in its wonderful
delineations of David, 'the man after God's own heart,' and of St. Peter,
the chief of the apostles. And there are points of likeness between the
character of Dietrich, and that of David, which will surely suggest
themselves to any acute student of human nature. M. Thierry attributes
to him, as his worse self, 'les instincts les plus violents; la cruaute,
l'astuce, l'egoisme impitoyable.' The two first counts are undeniable--at
least during his youth: they were the common vices of the age. The two
latter I must hold as not proven by facts: but were they proven, they
would still be excusable, on the simple ground of his Greek education.
'Cunning and pitiless egotism' were the only moral qualities which
Dietrich is likely to have seen exercised at the court of Constantinople:
and what wonder, if he was somewhat demoralized by the abominable
atmosphere which he breathed from childhood? Dietrich is an illustration
of the saga with which these lectures began. He is the very type of the
forest child, bewitched by the fine things of the wicked Troll garden.
The key to the man's character, indeed the very glory of it, is the long
struggle within him, between the Teutonic and the Greek elements. Dazzled
and debauched, at times, by the sinful glories of the Bosphorus, its
palaces, its gold, and its women, he will break the spell desperately. He
will become a wild Goth and an honest man once more; he will revenge his
own degradation on that court and empire which he knows well enough to
despise, distrust and hate. Again and again the spell comes over him.
His vanity and his passions make him once more a courtier among the
Greeks; but the blood of Odin is strong within him still;