“He mentioned to me,” said he, slowly, and puffing his cigar at easy intervals, “that you desire your servant should sleep in the same room with you. I am always happy to meet the wishes of courteous fellow-travellers, and so I have ordered my servant to give you his bed; he will sleep upstairs in what was intended for you. Good-night.” And with an insolent nod he lounged out of the room and left me.
CHAPTER XXIV. MY CANDOR AS AN AUTOBIOGRAPHER.
My reader is sufficiently acquainted with me by this time to know that there is one quality in me on which he can always count with safety,—my candor! There may be braver men and more ingenious men; there may be, I will not dispute it, persons more gifted with oratorical powers, better linguists, better mathematicians, and with higher acquirements in art; but I take my stand upon candor, and say, there never lived the man, ancient or modern, who presented a more open and undisguised section of himself than I have done, am doing, and hope to do to the end. And what, I would ask you, is the reason why we have hitherto made so little progress in that greatest of all sciences,—the knowledge of human nature? Is it not because we are always engaged in speculating on what goes on in the hearts of others, guessing, as it were, what people are doing next door, instead of honestly recording what takes place in their own house?
You think this same candor is a small quality. Well, show me one thoroughly honest autobiography. Of all the men who have written their own memoirs, it is fair to presume that some may have lacked personal courage, some been deficient in truthfulness, some forgetful of early friendships, and so on. Yet where will you find me one, I only ask one, who declares, “I was a coward, I never could speak truth, I was by nature ungrateful”?
Now, it would be exactly through such confessions as these our knowledge of humanity would be advanced. The ship that makes her voyage without the loss of a spar or a rope, teaches little; but there is a whole world of information in the log of the vessel with a great hole in her, all her masts carried away, the captain invariably drunk, and the crew mutinous; then we hear of energy and daring and ready-wittedness, marvellous resource, and indomitable perseverance; then we come to estimate a variety of qualities that are only evoked by danger. Just as some gallant skipper might say, “I saw that we couldn't weather the point, and so I dropped anchor in thirty fathoms, and determined to trust all to my cables;” or, “I perceived that we were settling down, so I crowded all sail on, resolved to beach her.” In the same spirit I would like to read in some personal memoir, “Knowing that I could not rely on my courage; feeling that if pressed hard, I should certainly have told a lie—” Oh, if we only could get honesty like this! If some great statesman, some grand foreground figure of his age would sit down to give his trials as they really occurred, we should learn more of life from one such volume than we glean from all the mock memoirs we have been reading for centuries!
It is the special pleading of these records that makes them so valueless; the writer always is bent on making out his case. It is the eternal representation of that spectacle said to be so pleasing to the gods,—the good man struggling with adversity. But what we want to see is the weak man, the frail man, the man who has to fight adversity with an old rusty musket and a flint lock, instead of an Enfield rifle, loading at the breech!
I 'd not give a rush to see Blondin cross the Falls of Niagara on a tight-rope; but I'd cross the Atlantic to see, «ay, the Lord Mayor or the Master of the Rolls try it.
Now, much-respected reader, do not for a moment suppose that I have, even in my most vainglorious raptures, ever imagined that I was here in these records supplying the void I have pointed out. Remember that I have expressly told you such confessions, to be valuable, ought to come from a great man. Painful as the avowal is, I am not a great man! Elements of greatness I have in me, it is true; but there are wants, deficiencies, small little details, many of them,—rivets and bolts, as it were,—without which the machinery can't work; and I know this, and I feel it.
This digression has all grown out of my unwillingness to mention what mention I must,—that I passed my night at the little inn on the table where we supped. I had not courage to assert the right to my bed in the Count's room; and so I wrapped myself in my cloak, and with my carpetbag for a pillow, tried to sleep. It was no use; the most elastic spring-mattress and a down cushion would have failed that night to lull me! I was outraged beyond endurance: she had slighted, he had insulted me! Such a provocation as he gave me could have but one expiation. He could not, by any pretext, refuse me satisfaction. But was I as ready to ask it? Was it so very certain that I would insist upon this reparation? He was certain to wound, he might kill me! I believe I cried over that thought. To be cut off in the bud of one's youth, in the very spring-time of one's enjoyment,—I could not say of one's utility,—to go down unnoticed to the grave, never appreciated, never understood, with vulgar and mistaken judgments upon one's character and motives! I thought my heart would burst with the affliction of such a picture, and I said, “No, Potts, live; and reply to such would-be slanderers by the exercise of the qualities of your great nature.” Numberless beautiful little episodes came thronging to my memory of good men, men whose personal gallantry had won them a world-wide renown, refusing to fight a duel. “We are to storm the citadel to-morrow, Colonel,” said one; “let us see which of us will be first up the breach.” How I loved that fellow for his speech; and I tortured my mind how, as there was no citadel to be carried by assault, I could apply its wisdom to my own case. What if I were to say, “Count, the world is before us,—a world full of trials and troubles. With the common fortune of humanity, we are certain each of us to have our share. What if we meet on this spot, say ten years hence, and see who has best acquitted himself in the conflict?” I wonder what he would say. The Germans are a strange, imaginative, dreamy sort of folk. Is it not likely that he would be struck by a notion so undeniably original? Is it not probable that he would seize my hand with rapture, and say, “Ja! I agree”? Still, it is possible that he might not; he might be one of those vulgar matter-of-fact creatures who will regard nothing through the tinted glass of fancy; he might ridicule the project, and tell it at breakfast as a joke. I felt almost smothered as this notion crossed me.