I confess I was no less gratified by the opportunity thus presented of forming an acquaintance with the officer himself than with the scenery, and I took my seat with much pleasure. As we chatted away about the town and the surrounding country, he half expressed a curiosity at my taking a route so little travelled by my countrymen, and seemed much amused by my confession that the matter was purely accidental, and that frequently I left the destination of my ramble to the halting-place of the diligence. As English eccentricity can, in a foreigner’s estimation, carry any amount of absurdity, he did not set me down for a madman—which, had I been French or Italian, he most certainly would have done—and only smiled slightly at my efforts to defend a procedure in his eyes so ludicrous.
‘You confess,’ said I, at last, somewhat nettled by the indifference with which he heard my most sapient arguments—‘you confess on what mere casualties every event of life turns, what straws decide the whole destiny of a man, and what mere trivial circumstances influence the fate of whole nations, and how in our wisest and most matured plans some unexpected contingency is ever arising to disconcert and disarrange us; why, then, not go a step farther—leave more to fate, and reserve all our efforts to behave well and sensibly, wherever we may be placed, in whatever situations thrown? As we shall then have fewer disappointments, we shall also enjoy a more equable frame of mind, to combat with the world’s chances.’
‘True, if a man were to lead a life of idleness, such a wayward course might possibly suffice him as well as any other; but, bethink you, it is not thus men have wrought great deeds, and won high names for themselves. It is not by fickleness and caprice, by indolent yielding to the accident of the hour, that reputations have been acquired——’
‘You speak,’ said I, interrupting him at this place—‘you speak as if humble men like myself were to occupy their place in history, and not lie down in the dust of the churchyard undistinguishable and forgotten.’
‘When they cease to act otherwise than to deserve commemoration, rely upon it their course is a false one. Our conscience may be—indeed often is—a bribed judge; and it is only by representing to ourselves how our modes of acting and thinking would tell upon the minds of others, reading of but not knowing us, that we arrive at that certain rule of right so difficult in many worldly trials.
‘And do you think a man becomes happier by this?’
‘I did not say happier,’ said he, with a sorrowful emphasis on the last word. ‘He may be better.’
With that he rose from his seat, and looking at his watch he apologised for leaving me so suddenly, and departed.
‘Who is the gentleman that has just gone out?’ asked I of the waiter.
‘The Baron von Elgenheim,’ replied he; ‘but they mostly call him the Black Colonel. Not for his moustaches,’ added he, laughing with true German familiarity, ‘they are white enough, but he always wears mourning.’