“Really, sir,” said I, coolly, “I am amazed at the innocence with which you can make such a demand on the man whom you have, only a few minutes back, so acutely depicted as an adventurer.”
“It was for that very reason I thought of applying to you. Had you been a young fellow of a certain fortune, you 'd naturally have been a stranger to the accidents which now and then leave men penniless in out-of-the-way places, and it is just as likely that the first thought in your head would be, 'Oh, he's a swindler. Why has n't he his letters of credit or his circular notes?' But, being exactly what I take you for, the chances are, you 'll say: 'What has befallen him to-day may chance to me to-morrow. Who can tell the day and the hour some mishap may not overtake him? and so I 'll just help him through it.'”
“And that was your calculation?”
“That was my calculation.”
“How sorry I feel to wound the marvellous gift you seem to possess of interpreting character. I am really shocked to think that for this time, at least, your acuteness is at fault.”
“Which means that you 'll not do it.”
I smiled a benign assent.
He looked at me for a minute or more with a sort of blank incredulity, and then, crossing his arms on his breast, moved slowly down the walk without speaking.
I cannot say how I detested this man; he had offended me in the very sorest part of all my nature; he had wounded the nicest susceptibility I possessed; of the pleasant fancies wherewith I loved to clothe myself he would not leave me enough to cover my nakedness; and yet, now that I had resented his cool impertinence, I hated myself far more than I hated him. Dignity and sarcasm, forsooth! What a fine opportunity to display them, truly! The man might be rude and underbred; he was rude and underbred! and was that any justification for my conduct towards him? Why had I not had the candor to say, “Here 's all I possess in the world; you see yourself that I cannot lend you ten pounds.” How I wished I had said that, and how I wished, even more ardently still, that I had never met him, never interchanged speech with him!
“And why is it that I am offended with him,—simply because he has discovered that I am Potts?” Now, these reflections were all the more bitter, since it was only twenty-four hours before that I had resolved to throw off delusion either of myself or others; that I would take my place in the ranks, and fight out my battle of life a mere soldier. For this it was that I made companionship with Vaterehen, walking the high road with that poor old man of motley, and actually speculating—in a sort of artistic way—whether I should not make love to Tintefleck! And if I were sincere in all this, how should I feel wounded by the honest candor of that plain-spoken fellow. He wanted a favor at my hands, he owned this; and yet, instead of approaching me with flattery, he at once assails the very stronghold of my self-esteem, and says, “No humbug, Potts; at least none with me!” He opens acquaintance with me on that masonic principle by which the brotherhood of Poverty is maintained throughout all lands and all peoples, and whose great maxim is, “He who lends to the poor man borrows from the ragged man.”