"Is he melancholy?" asked his hearer.
"Not exactly that," said Roderick; "only his parents, I think, indulged him too much, and he has taken no pains with himself. He has let his feelings ebb and flow regularly, till it has grown into a habit; and if ever the usual set of emotions are put out, he cries, 'A miracle!' and offers premiums to doctors to come and clear up a marvellous natural phenomenon. He is the best fellow in the world; but all the pains I have taken to cure him of these absurdities are thrown away: nothing does him any good. It is as much as I can do to keep in his good graces at all, he is so angry when I speak to him."
"A doctor would be the thing for him, I should think," said the other.
"It is one of his peculiarities," answered Roderick, "to despise the whole art of medicine from beginning to end. Disorders, he says, are all different in different persons, and all general rules and theories are mere absurdities. He would rather go to old women, and use their sympathetic simples. Again, on other grounds, he despises all prudential proceedings, and every thing like orderliness and moderation. From his childhood he has had his ideal of what a great man ought to be, and what his endeavour is to be to make of himself; and one of the points of this ideal is to have an utter scorn of all things, particularly of money; and so, that he may never be suspected of being economical, or not liking to give away, or indeed of thinking of money at all, he flings it away in the absurdest way in the world. Consequently, with all his fine property, he is always poor and in difficulties, and is made a fool of by every one who is not great in the sense in which he understands greatness. To be his friend is the most difficult of things; for he is so irritable, that if one does but cough, it is a sign one is not spiritual, and to pick one's teeth would throw him into convulsions."
"Has he never been in love?" inquired Anderson.
"Why, who is he to love?" answered Roderick: "he despises all the daughters of earth. If his ideal were to shew a fancy for a bow or a ribbon, much more to dance, it would break his heart. And if she did but catch a cold, I don't know what would become of him."
Emilius was again in the crowd; when on a sudden the shock and pain which such scenes and concourses often produced came over him again, and chased him away out of the room and the house, along the now empty streets, to his house. It was not till he found himself alone in his own room that he recovered his self-possession. His servant lit his candle and placed it on the table; and Emilius told him to go to bed. The other side of the street all was dark as the grave; and he sat himself down to let the thoughts the ball had awakened in him flow off into a poem.
There was calm in the spirit's depths;
In chains the demons slept;
With purpose fell to work his ill
Uprose the wicked will.
"Fling wide," he cried,
"The prison-gate,
Come forth, ye demons all!"
With yell and shout
That hideous rout
Sprung out at the welcome call.
Tralala! Tralala!
Whoop, whoop, whoop, hurrah, hurrah!
Trumpet crash and cymbal clash;
Flute, and fife, and violin,
Squeaking, shrieking, clattering;
Clarions ring with deafening din;
Now hell's chorus shall begin,
Now the fiends of madness reign;
Gentle child-like peace is slain.
In and out, across, about,
Whither pass this tumbling rout?
Merry dance we, and the lights flash free,
Jubilee, jubilee, jubilee!
Kettle-drums bang and cymbals clang,
And the devil drown care in the pool of despair.