With charming spontaneity and frankness, but critically withal, O. has furnished us with a picture of his mental state. Nothing could be truer or more instructive than this piece of self-observation, even though his obvious pleasure in hearing himself talk is a little weakness of which, to tell the truth, he is the first to accuse himself:
In childhood and at school my accomplishments were ever on the same dead level of mediocrity. I was neither brilliant nor backward; in the drawing-room or in the playground, I was good at everything without excelling in anything; the astonishing facility with which I learned to sing, play, draw, and paint, was linked with inability to distinguish myself at these pursuits.
Each new study, each new game, attract and captivate me at first, but I soon tire of them, and once a fresh enterprise has taken their place, indifference to them changes to disgust. If I am amused with a thing, I do it well; if bored, I throw it aside. I suppose it is characteristic of people who tic to be fickle and vacillating.
The versatility which is so fundamental an element in O.'s nature has not been prejudicial to his business career. He has managed and still manages important commercial undertakings, demanding initiative and decision, and, so far from sparing himself in any way, he has exhibited a combination of caution and audacity that has stood him in good stead. It is more especially in the conduct of urgent operations that his alertness is displayed. His comprehensive grasp of the situation enables him to put his machinery at once into action, with eminently satisfactory results, if we judge by his prosperous and assured position.
His mobile and impulsive temperament is revealed in his every deed, but he shows at the same time a curious disposition to alternate between the pros and the cons of a question. It is the outcome of his extremely analytical and introspective mind.
I find myself seeking a knot in every bulrush. I experience a sensation of pleasure only to tax my ingenuity in discovering some danger or blame therein. If a person produces an agreeable impression on me, I cudgel my brains in the attempt to detect faults in him. I take it into my head to ascertain how anything from which I derive enjoyment might become an aversion instead. The absurdity of these inconsistencies is perfectly patent to me, and my reflections occasion me pain; but the attainment of my ends is accompanied with a feeling of pleasure.
In regard to my tics, what I find most insupportable is the thought that I am making myself ridiculous and that every one is laughing at me. I seem to notice in each person I pass in the street a curious look of scorn or of pity that is either humiliating or irritating. No doubt my statement is a little exaggerated, but my fellows and I have an overweening self-conceit. We wish to be ignored, and yet we wish to be considered; it is annoying to be the object of sympathy, but we cannot bear to become a laughing-stock. Accordingly our goal is the dissimulation of our failing by any means feasible; yet nine times out of ten our efforts are abortive simply because we invent a tic to hide a tic, and so add both to the ridicule and the disease.
Alike in speaking and in writing O. betrays an advanced degree of mental instability. His conversation is a tissue of disconnected thoughts and uncompleted sentences; he interrupts himself to diverge at a tangent on a new train of ideas—a method of procedure not without its charm, as it frequently results in picturesque and amusing associations. No sooner has he expressed one idea in words than another rises in his mind, a third, a fourth, each of which must be suitably clothed; but as time fails for this purpose, the consequence is a series of obscure ellipses which are often captivating by their very unexpectedness.
His writing presents an analogous characteristic.
It has often happened that I have commenced a business letter in the usual formal way, gradually to lose sight of its object in a crowd of superfluous details. Worse still, if the matter in hand be delicate or wearisome, my impatience is not slow to assert itself by remarks and reproaches so pointed and violent that my only course on reperusal of the letter is to tear it up.