“Not to the old gentleman, I hope,” rejoined Frere, “though your black looks would almost lead one to imagine so.”
“What weak, inconsistent fools we are!” pursued Lewis.
“Speak for yourself, young man,” observed Frere parenthetically.
“How vacillating and impotent,” continued Lewis, not heeding the interruption, “is even the strongest will! I have done this morning the thing I believed I most anxiously desired to do—the thing I came here hoping to accomplish—I have secured a competence for my mother and sister. I have done so on better terms than I had deemed possible. I have met with consideration, if not kindness, from—from my employer.” He pronounced the word firmly, though his temples throbbed and his lip quivered with suppressed emotion as he did so. “All this should make me contented, if not happy. Happy!” he repeated mockingly. “Frere,” he continued, with a sudden burst of impetuosity, “it has not done so—I am miserable!”
He rose from his seat and began pacing the room with impatient strides. Faust followed him for one or two turns, wagging his tail and gazing up into his face with loving eyes; but finding his efforts to attract attention unavailing, he uttered a piteous whine, and, retreating to a corner, crouched down, as perfectly aware that his master was unhappy as if he had been a human creature and could have “told his love” in words. Frere would have spoken, but Lewis checked him by a gesture, and continued his rapid walk for some minutes in silence. At length he spoke—
“You think me selfish and ungrateful, and you are right; I am so. I have schooled myself to bear all this, and I will bear it; but bitter thoughts arise and at times overpower me. I am very young” (“True for you,” muttered Frere, sotto voce), “and I am so unfit for such a life as lies before me, a life of tame and ceaseless drudgery, in which to indulge the high aspirations and noble daring that win men honour becomes misplaced folly; to live with people whose equal, if not superior, I feel myself, in a semi-menial capacity; to obey when I would command; to forfeit all that is bright and fair in existence—intercourse with the higher order of minds, the society of pure and refined spirits; and, above all, to lose the only thing I really prize on earth—my independence.
“Well,” he continued, after a pause, “the die is cast, and repining is worse than useless. I will give this experiment a fair trial; it may be the harness will set more easily on me than I imagine; and should it become unbearable, I can but cast it off and start afresh: there is such a thing as to compel one’s destiny!”