“Pshaw! all that is my own case, exactly; arguing cases affects me in just that way. Every orator or actor, every artist or professional man, who is obliged to be hard at work for half his life in instructing, enlightening, or amusing others, as soon as the curtain falls is weary of the whole human race and of himself. If I am good-humored and happy at present, it is only because I have been idle for four or five days. You should see me in my own home, on returning from court! You should hear me then, scolding at my housekeeper for not bringing the tea promptly enough, at the clients who are besieging me, at the doors of my house for creaking! Everything irritates me. Finally, I sit down in an arm-chair, take up some book of history or philosophy, or a novel, and very soon go happily to sleep in entire forgetfulness of my cursed profession.”
“You sleep happily, M. Goefle; it is because, in spite of the excitement of your nerves, you feel that you have been doing something earnest and useful.”
“Hm! Hm! Not always! One cannot always argue on the right side, and even in pleading the very best cause, one cannot be always sure of using arguments that are exactly just and true. Believe me, Christian, although the saying is that no occupation is foolish, I say that all occupations are so; so it makes little difference which of them you adopt. Do not despise your own, for such as it is, it is a hundred times more moral than mine.”
“Oh! oh! M. Goefle, what a paradox that is! Come, let us hear you argue it! You can use plenty of eloquence there.”
“No eloquence, my children,” said M. Goefle, as the two officers and Christian urged him to give rein to his imagination; “there would be no use in sophisticating; and besides, I am taking a vacation. But I tell you in perfect good faith, that the art of story-telling is superior to all others. It is incontestably the first in point of time, for as soon as men could talk they invented mythologies, composed poems, and recited histories; and it is the first in moral usefulness, too—I am ready to maintain it against the whole university, and even Stangstadius himself, who believes nothing but what he can touch. Man never learns by experience. You may teach him authentic history as much as you please, and, in spite of it, he will continually reenact—on a higher level, if you choose, corresponding to his grade of civilization—the same faults and follies as ever. Do we even learn by our own experience? I know well enough that I shall be ill to-morrow for having played the young man to-night, and you see how much I care for it. It is not reason which controls man, it is imagination—fancy. That is, it is art, poetry, music, painting, the drama. Wait, gentlemen, let me empty my glass before I proceed to my second head.”
“Your health, M. Goefle!” cried the three friends.
“And yours, my children! Well, to proceed: I do not consider Christian Waldo as a showman of marionettes? What is a marionette? A bit of wood covered with a rag. It is the intellect and the soul of Christian which give interest and significance to his pieces. I look on him as not merely an actor, for he has to do something more than vary his accent and change his voice every moment, in order to move his audience; that is a mere trick of his trade. He is an author as well, for his plays are little masterpieces. They remind one of those short, exquisite musical pieces which illustrious composers of the Italian and German schools have written for theatres like his. ‘Music for children,’ they modestly call it, but it has always been the delight of connoisseurs. Then, gentlemen, let us render justice to Christian Waldo.”
“Yes! yes!” cried the two officers, enthusiastic under the influence of their punch; “long live Christian Waldo! He is a man of genius!”
“Not at all,” said Christian, laughing, “but I see now what makes my uncle despise the profession of law so much. It enables him to maintain, and to make other people believe, the most enormous misrepresentations.”
“Hush, nephew! It’s not your turn to speak! I say—but, Christian, you are an ungrateful fellow! You are not a lawyer, and yet you complain! You can investigate the abstract truth embodied in all kinds of fictions, and yet you grow tired of making men love it! You possess intellect, a good heart, education, and knowledge of the world, and here you are calling yourself a mountebank, just to depreciate your work, and perhaps to abandon it! Wretch! is that your purpose?”