You
can call quits with me on the score of gratitude. I am quite willing
that you should despise me to-day, because I am sure that you will
have a kindlier feeling towards me later on. You will find out
fathomless depths in my nature, enormous and concentrated forces that
weaklings call vices, but you will never find me base or ungrateful.
In short, I am neither a pawn nor a bishop, but a castle, a tower of
strength, my boy."
"What manner of man are you?" cried Eugene. "Were you created to
torment me?"
"Why no; I am a good-natured fellow, who is willing to do a dirty
piece of work to put you high and dry above the mire for the rest of
your days. Do you ask the reason of this devotion? All right; I will
tell you that some of these days. A word or two in your ear will
explain it. I have begun by shocking you, by showing you the way to
ring the changes, and giving you a sight of the mechanism of the
social machine; but your first fright will go off like a conscript's
terror on the battlefield. You will grow used to regarding men as
common soldiers who have made up their minds to lose their lives for
some self-constituted king. Times have altered strangely.
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