When Neddy read to his father, it was from a different book; he called it “History of the French Revolution.” It might have been a history of my race, for it seemed to be all about rats: democ-rats and aristoc-rats; “doubtless,” thought I, “tribes peculiar to France.” Most savage fellows the first seemed to have been—to our race what tigers are to cats, still more powerful, bloody, and destructive. I, like others who jump at conclusions, and do not understand half of what they hear, had made a ridiculous mistake. My vanity had led me to over-estimate the importance of my family; but a conversation between Neddy and his father undeceived me, and made me a sadder and a wiser rat.
Neddy.—“Well, papa, I fancy that we shall have a great deal to see at St. Petersburg—palaces, churches, gardens, all sorts of sights! But what I most want to see is the czar himself, the great autoc-rat of all the Russias.”
I gave such a start at this, that I dreaded for a moment that I had betrayed my hiding-place. Here was another rat, and one so singular and so great, that he was thought more worthy to be seen than all St. Petersburg besides! I really felt my whole frame swelling with pride; every hair in my whiskers quivered!
“Is he really so powerful, papa, as people say that he is?”
“Very powerful indeed, my boy.”
“And he’s despotic, is he not? He has no Parliament?”
“No Parliament!” I repeated to myself; “well, that’s no great matter in a country so abounding with other good things! But what a rat of rats this must be, to be so spoken of and thought of by the lords of creation!”
“It must be a fine thing to be an autoc-rat, papa, and have no law but one’s own will!”
“It is a giddy elevation, Neddy, which no truly wise man, conscious of human infirmity, would ever covet to attain.”
“Wise man! human infirmity!” exclaimed I. These few words, like a touch to a bubble, had burst my high-blown ideas of family dignity. It was a man, then, one of human race, who chose to add rat to his name; and these democ-rats and aristoc-rats in France—why, they must be men too, nothing but men, after all!