On this last evening his host was alone, and after some indifferent conversation he told Arthur the following story, and made a proposal which had a strange influence on the rest of his life:
"You may have wondered," he said, "at the cause which brought me here, and keeps me here. I have often admired your courtesy, which has made no attempts to discover my antecedents; it is not the usual characteristic of our nation. If you are disposed to hear, I am willing to give you a little autobiographical outline, which is a necessary preface to a request which I am going to make of you."
He then mentioned his name and parentage—facts which I am not at liberty to repeat. They surprised even Arthur when he heard them; they surprised me, when he communicated them to me, even more.
He was the son of an English nobleman of high rank and wealth and aristocratic traditions, and was reported to be long since dead. Many people will no doubt remember the shock which the news of the premature death of this individual, when announced in Europe, made. It took place at Palermo in 1853. More than that I am not at liberty to state.
"My reasons for this were as follows," said his host. "I meditated a retirement from the world of a kind which should be absolute, which should excite no inquiries, no interest, except a retrospective one. To have merely disappeared would not have suited my purpose; search would have been instituted. The connections and influence of my family would have made such a plan liable to constant disaster. From Palermo, after superintending the making of my tombstone, I came straight back here, to a house which I had already prepared for myself under an anonymous name. I travelled with the utmost secrecy; I married, as you have seen, a native wife; and from that day to this I have never beheld a European face but yours. Your arrival was so unexpected as to shiver resolve and habit; but I have no reason to regret, as far as I can see, my confidence. I feel that I can unreservedly trust you.
"You will no doubt wonder as to my aim in executing this hazardous and Quixotic project. I do not mind telling you now, at this lapse of time, though I have never before opened my reasons to any one, because I think that I observe in you traces of that temper which led me to take the step.
"It seemed to me that Western life had got into a confusion and complication from which nothing could deliver it. The principles now incorporated with the very existence of the most influential men in it seemed to me to be radically erroneous, and the disposition of the Western mind is of a kind which augments with indefinite rapidity the strength of any prevalent idea.
"What I mean is this. May I explain by a quotation? A sentence from a certain review of the poet Coleridge's life and work is as follows: 'Devoted as he was to mystic and ideal contemplation, to abstractions of mind and spirit, he naturally became untrustworthy in every relation of life.'
"That represents, in an exaggerated form, the ideal of the Western mind. They are, though they would not so name themselves, gross materialists; and the tendency is increasing on them daily and yearly. Those who protest occasionally against current thought, who appear like prophets with bitter invective and words of warning on their lips, are swept away by the tide, and write of trade and treaties, of wars of principle and convenience. The very divines are tainted. 'Live your life to the uttermost,' they cry.
"And in the Western mind the tendency once rooted gathers force from every quarter. As a necessary concomitant of the restless habit, the enshrining of the 'effective man' in their proudest temples, comes an extreme deference to other people, a heated straining of the ears to catch the murmurs of that vague uncertain heart—Public Opinion. And why? It follows: if it is in this life alone that triumphs must be won—if on this stage alone the drama is to be played out, and the time is short—it is that imperious will that you must conciliate; therefore employ every power to gain the art of so doing.