to
cruelty, as you have seen a schoolmaster begin punishment with tears,
grow angry at the shrinking back under his cane, and give way to a
sudden lust of torture. I have little pity for those who can help
themselves--let them fight or eat the leek; but the child and the
helpless and the sick it is a pleasure to aid. I love the poor as much
as I love anything. I could live their life, if I were put to it. As a
gentleman, I hate squalor and the puddles of wretchedness but I could
have worked at the plough or the anvil; I could have dug in the earth
till my knuckles grew big and my shoulders hardened to a roundness,
have eaten my beans and pork and pea-soup, and have been a healthy
ox, munching the bread of industry and trailing the puissant pike, a
diligent serf. I have no ethics, and yet I am on the side of the just
when they do not put thorns in my bed to keep me awake at night!"

Upon the walls hung suits of armour, swords of beautiful make, spears,
belts of wonderful workmanship, a tattered banner, sashes knit by
ladies' fingers, pouches, bandoleers, and many strong sketches of scenes
that I knew well. Now and then a woman's head in oils or pencil peeped
out from the abundant ornaments. I recalled then another thing he said
at that time of which I write:

"I have never juggled with my conscience--never 'made believe' with it.
My will was always stronger than my wish for anything, always stronger
than temptation. I have chosen this way or that deliberately. I am ever
ready to face consequences, and never to cry out. It is the ass who does
not deserve either reward or punishment who says that something carried
him away, and, being weak, he fell. That is a poor man who is no
stronger than his passions. I can understand the devil fighting God, and
taking the long punishment without repentance, like a powerful prince as
he was. I could understand a peasant, killing King Louis in the palace,
and being ready, if he had a hundred lives, to give them all, having
done the deed he set out to do. If a man must have convictions of that
sort, he can escape everlasting laughter--the final hell--only by facing
the rebound of his wild deeds."

These were strange sentiments in the mouth of a man who was ever the
mannered courtier, and as I sat there alone, while he was gone elsewhere
for some minutes, many such things he had said came back to me,
suggested, no doubt, by this new, inexplicable attitude towards myself.
I could trace