"You look unwell, uncle, to-night," she said, when one evening he entered the room with looks more fatigued than usual; and rising, she leaned tenderly over him, and kissed his forehead.
"Ay!" said Brandon, utterly unwon by, and even unheeding, the caress, "our way of life soon passes into the sear and yellow leaf; and when Macbeth grieved that he might not look to have that which should accompany old age, he had grown doting, and grieved for what was worthless."
"Nay, uncle, 'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,' these surely were worth the sighing for?"
"Pooh! not worth a single sigh! The foolish wishes we form in youth have something noble and something bodily in them; but those of age are utter shadows, and the shadows of pygmies! Why, what is honour, after all? What is this good name among men? Only a sort of heathenish idol, set up to be adored by one set of fools and scorned by another. Do you not observe, Lucy, that the man you hear most praised by the party you meet to-day is most abused by that which you meet to-morrow? Public men are only praised by their party; and their party, sweet Lucy, are such base minions that it moves one's spleen to think one is so little as to be useful to them. Thus a good name is only the good name of a sect, and the members of that sect are only marvellous proper knaves."
"But posterity does justice to those who really deserve fame."
"Posterity! Can you believe that a man who knows what life is cares for the penny whistles of grown children after his death? Posterity, Lucy,— no! Posterity is but the same perpetuity of fools and rascals; and even were justice desirable at their hands, they could not deal it. Do men agree whether Charles Stuart was a liar or a martyr? For how many ages have we believed Nero a monster! A writer now asks, as if demonstrating a problem, what real historian could doubt that Nero was a paragon? The patriarchs of Scripture have been declared by modern philosophy to be a series of astronomical hieroglyphs; and, with greater show of truth, we are assured that the patriot Tell never existed! Posterity! the word has gulled men enough without my adding to the number. I, who loathe the living, can scarcely venerate the unborn. Lucy, believe me that no man can mix largely with men in political life, and not despise everything that in youth he adored! Age leaves us only one feeling,—contempt!"
"Are you belied, then?" said Lucy, pointing to a newspaper, the organ of the party opposed to Brandon: "are you belied when you are here called 'ambitious'? When they call you 'selfish' and 'grasping,' I know they wrong you; but I confess that I have thought you ambitious; yet can he who despises men desire their good opinion?"
"Their good opinion!" repeated Brandon, mockingly: "do we want the bray of the asses we ride? No!" he resumed, after a pause. "It is power, not honour; it is the hope of elevating oneself in every respect, in the world without as well as in the world of one's own mind: it is this hope which makes me labour where I might rest, and will continue the labour to my grave. Lucy," continued Brandon, fixing his keen eyes on his niece, "have you no ambition,—have power and pomp and place no charm for your mind?"
"None!" said Lucy, quietly and simply.
"Indeed! yet there are times when I have thought I recognized my blood in your veins. You are sprung from a once noble, but a fallen race. Are you ever susceptible to the weakness of ancestral pride?"