“I think you judge him hardly.”
“Judge him hardly! Why, sir, what judgment can equal the man's own condemnation of himself? He has some doubts—some very grave doubts—about his right to his estate, and straightway he goes and throws it into a law-court. He prefers, in fact, that his inheritance should be eaten up by lawyers than quietly enjoyed by his own family. Such men are usually provided with lodgings at Hanwell; their friends hide their razors, and don't trust them with toothpicks.”
“Oh, this is too much: he may take an extreme view of what his duty is in this matter, but he 's certainly no more mad than I am.”
“I repeat, sir, that the man who takes conscience for his guide in the very complicated concerns of life is unfit to manage his affairs. Conscience is a constitutional peculiarity, nothing more. To attempt to subject the business of life to conscience would be about as absurd as to regulate the funds by the state of the barometer.”
“I 'll not defend what he is doing—I 'm as sorry for it as any one; I only protest against his being thought a fool.”
“What do you say then to this last step of his, if it be indeed true that he has accepted this post?”
“I'm afraid it is; my sister Ellen says they are on their way to Cattaro.”
“I declare that I regard it as an outrage. I can give it no other name. It is an outrage. What, sir, am I, who have reached the highest rank of my career, or something very close to it; who have obtained my Grand Cross; who stand, as I feel I do, second to none in the public service;—am I to have my brother-in-law, my wife's brother, gazetted to a post I might have flung to my valet!”'
“There I admit he was wrong.”
“That is to say, sir, that you feel the personal injury his indiscreet conduct has inflicted. You see your own ruin in his rashness.”