But Paul felt that there was no such change anywhere as in himself. A certain complacency had stolen across the horror which had shaken him at the first contemplation of his own fall. He had made a step towards manhood; he heard the talk of men—not the best, not the wisest, yet neither the worst nor the most stupid—and he knew now how lightly they valued that which he had once esteemed priceless. He had written in his note-book:
‘To forgive is godlike. Be as God unto thyself.’
He had made a step towards manhood. He had thought it a hideous, irremediable plunge to ruin, and yet somehow he seemed to stand the higher for it. The episode was to be hateful for ever in memory. But it was to cloud life no longer—only to stand as a sign of warning, a danger-signal. Surely the net is spread in vain in the sight of any bird. The burned child dreads the fire. He did not as yet reckon that man is a moral Salamander, and accommodates himself to all temperatures of heat and asceticism. How should a raw lad of less than nineteen think in such a fashion? But he knew what he had not known; he had passed through the fire, and the smell of burning had left his raiment.
The Midland mother gave him a cold cheek to kiss when he went away, but the Scottish father embraced him with a trembling arm.
‘Ye’ll be remembering Sir Walter’s last words to Lockhart,’ he said. ‘Be a good man, my dear.’
Paul pressed his smooth cheek against the soft white whiskers of his father’s face, and held his right hand hard. There was a lump in his throat, and his good-bye had a husk in it. He went back to the society of men who had never thought manly chastity a virtue or the unchastity of men a crime. He went back armed in steel, and the armour lasted a full fortnight in its perfection. Then here and there a rivet came out, and by-and-by the whole suit fell to pieces.
‘Id is gurious,’ said Darco, ‘that all the vunniest sdories in the vorlt should be vhat they gall imbrober. Look at Arisdophanes; look at Jaucer; look at the “Gontes Troladigues”; look at the “Tegameron.”’
‘Look at Pickwick,’ said Paul.
‘Vell!’ cried Darco, ‘look at Bigvig. Bigvig woult haf peen a creat teal vunnier if Tickens had lived at the dime of Zmollet.’
‘I don’t mind drinking out of a jug,’ said Paul, ‘but I like a clean jug. I’ve read Aristophanes—in translation. It’s like drinking wine out of a gold cup that has been washed in a sewer.’