One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre

by G. P. R. James

"How now, sir!" cried the youth, proudly tossing back his head; "school'st thou me?"

"Nay, I school you not," answered the dwarf; "and less than all sought to offend you. I would have given you consolation. I would have said that you, for a great prize, had played a stake as weighty:--I mean that knowingly, willingly, you had risked happiness for love; and, seemingly having lost, are sorrowful; but still you have the satisfaction of knowing that your fate has been your own deliberate act."

"Would not that make it all the more painful, thou bitter medicine?" asked the youth.

"Not so!" answered the dwarf, "not so! Think, what must be his feelings who is born to disappointment and to scorn; whose heart may be as fine as that which beats in the bosom of the lordliest warrior in the land, and yet whose birthright is contempt, and degradation, and slight; whose mind may be as bright as that of prelate, or of lawgiver, and yet whose doom is to be despised and neglected? Think what must be his feelings, who has no refuge from disappointment, but in the hardness of despair; who has no warfare to wage against insult, but by hurling back contempt and defiance!"

"I am sorry for thee, from my heart," answered the youth. "Indeed, I am sorry for thee."

"Your pity I can bear," replied the dwarf, "because I believe it is of a nobler kind; but the pity of this base degraded world is poison to every wound in my heart. No more of myself, however," he added, resuming at once his usual look; "I have spoken too long about myself already. I cannot change my state, were I to reason on it till the sun grew old and weary of shining; but you can do much to change yours; and, in honesty, it were better to try a new plan, for this is a bad one."

"Care not thou for that," replied the other; "its wisdom or its folly rests upon me. Thou canst not say that there is either sin or crime therein; and till then, be silent."

"You spoke of your father's house," still persevered the dwarf. "Why not return thither, where now, since your uncle's death, peace, and repose, and a princely fortune await you?"

"Return thither!" replied the youth, with a sigh. "Return thither! and for what? to find the voices I used to love silent; the forms that used to cheer it gone; to see in every chamber a memorial of the dead, and in each well-known object a new source for tears. Oh, no! I loved that place once with love far beyond that which we give in general to inanimate things; but it was because the living, and the good, and the kind, were mingled up with every scene and every object; but now they are gone: the fairy spell is broken; the rich gold turned dross; and no place of all the earth is so painful in my sight as that--my father's house."

"Nevertheless," urged the dwarf somewhat anxiously; but the other went on: "But that is not all, Bartholo," he said, "that is not all; though that were fully enough. No, when I last saw my father's halls my bosom was as light as air, and all the thoughts that filled it were as the summer dreams of some sunny, happy child. Since then how many a bitter lesson have I learned; how changed is the aspect of life, and fate, and the world!--No, no! The sunshine that shone in my father's halls is gone for ever--the sunshine of a happy heart; and I will carry back with me a new star to light them, or never see them more."