I conclude that it must have been from some relation to her former fears she took immediate alarm at the possible bent my mind was receiving. Assuredly she deemed that his influence over me was not without peril, and resolved the following morning to send for the Herr Robert, and in all frankness avow her fears, and appeal to his friendship to allay them.
I was about to set off for school when the old man was ascending the stairs, and taking me by the hand he led me back again into the little chamber, where my mother awaited him.
“Let Jasper remain with us, madam,” said he; “the few words of your note have shown me what is passing in your mind, and it will save you and me a world of explanation if he be suffered to be present.”
My mother assented, not over willingly, perhaps, and the old man, taking a seat, at once begun,—
“If I had ever suspected, madam, that my history could have possibly possessed any interest for you, you should certainly have heard it ere now. My opinion was, however, different; and I thought, moreover, that as I had strictly abstained from encroaching upon your confidence, an equal reserve might have protected mine. Forgive me if by any accident the slightest word should escape me to cause you pain or displeasure. Nothing can be further from my thoughts than this intention, and I beg of you so to receive whatever I say.
“Some years ago, a physician, in whom I had and have the fullest confidence, forewarned me that if certain symptoms which I then labored under should ever recur, my case would be beyond remedy, and my life could not be prolonged many days. Two days since, the first signs of these became evident; yesterday the appearance became more palpable; to-day I recognize them in full force. When a man of my age talks of his approaching death, he only speaks of what has been before his thoughts every day and every night for years back. Whatever benefit I was ever capable of rendering my fellow-men in my younger days, I have been latterly a useless and profitless member of the guild, and for this reason, that though time had not effaced my powers of intellect, the energy and the force that should develop them was gone. Without youth there is no vitality; without vitality, no action; without action, no success. I often fancied what results might arise if to the mature thoughts and experience of age were to be added the fire, the energy, and the passion of youth. If caution and rashness, reserve and intrepidity, the distrust that comes of knowing men, with that credulous hope that stirs the young heart, were all to centre in one nature, what might we not effect? The fate that brought Jasper and myself together whispered to me that he might become such! I pictured to my mind the training he should go through, the hard discipline of work and labor, and yet without impairing in the slightest that mainspring of all power, the daring courage and energy of a young and brave spirit. To this end, he should incur no failures in early life, never know a reverse till it could become to him the starting-point for higher success. And thus launched upon life with every favoring breeze of fortune, what might not be predicted of his course?
“He who would stand high among his fellow-men, and be regarded as their benefactor and superior during his lifetime, must essentially be a man of action! The great geniuses of authorship, the illustrious in art, have received their best rewards from posterity; contemporaries have attacked them, depreciated and reviled them; the very accidents of their lives have served to injure the excellence of their compositions. But the man of action stands forth to his own age great and distinguished; the world on which his services have bestowed benefits is proud to reward him! and either as a legislator, a conqueror, or a discoverer, his claims meet full acknowledgment.
“Who would not be one of these, then?—who would not aspire to win the enthusiasm that tracks such a career, and makes a mere mortal godlike?
“To be such I possessed the secret! Nay, madam, this is not the weakness of faltering intellect, nor the outpouring of a silly vanity. Hear me out with patience but a very little longer. It is not of some wonder of science or of mystery, of occult art, that I speak; and yet the power to which I allude is infinitely greater than any of these were ever fancied to bestow. Imagine an engine by which the failing energies of a whole nation can be rallied, its wasting vigor repaired, its resources invigorated. Fancy a nation—millions—brought out of poverty, debt, and distress, into wealth, affluence, and abundance; the springs of their industry reinforced, the sources of their traffic refreshed. Picture to your mind the change from an embarrassed government, a ruined aristocracy, an indebted, poverty-stricken people, to a full treasury, a splendid nobility, and a prosperous and powerful nation. Imagine all this; and then, if you can ascribe the transformation to the working of one man's intelligence, what will you say of him?
“I am not conjuring up a mere visionary or impossible triumph; what I describe has been actually done, and he who accomplished it was my own father!