I am shocked now by what I have here written down. Of course I am a Leskjewitsch, or I never should allow myself to pass so harsh a judgment upon my nearest of kin. I suppose I ought to erase those lines, but, after all, no one will ever see them, and there is something pleasing in my bold delineation of the family characteristics. The style seems to me quite striking. So I will let my words stand as they are,--especially since the only one of the family who has ever been kind to me--Uncle Paul--is, according to the universal family verdict, no genuine Leskjewitsch, but a degenerate scion. In the first place, his hair and complexion are fair, and, in the second place, he is sensible. Among men in general, I believe he passes for mildly eccentric; his own family find him distressingly like other people.
To which of the two other brothers the prize for special originality is due, to the oldest or to the youngest,--to my grandfather or to the father of my playmate Harry,--the world finds it impossible to decide. Both are widowers, both are given over to a craze for travel. My grandfather's love of travel, however, reminds one of the restlessness of a white mouse turning the wheel in its cage; while my uncle Karl's is like that of the Wandering Jew, for whose restless soul this globe is too narrow.
My grandfather is continually travelling from one to another of his estates, seldom varying the round; Uncle Karl by turns hunts lions in the Soudan and walruses at the North Pole; and in their other eccentricities the brothers are very different. My grandfather is a cynic; Uncle Karl is a sentimentalist. My grandfather starts from the principle that all effort which has any end in view, save the satisfying of his excellent appetite and the promotion of his sound sleep, is nonsense; Uncle Karl intends to write a work which, if rightly appreciated, will entirely reform the spirit of the age. My grandfather is a miser; Uncle Karl is a spendthrift. Uncle Karl is beginning to see the bottom of his purse; my grandfather is enormously rich.
When I add that my grandfather is a conservative with a manner which is intentionally rude, and that Uncle Karl is a radical with the bearing of a courtier, I consider the picture of the two men tolerably complete. All that is left to say is that I know my uncle Karl only slightly, and my grandfather not at all, wherefore my descriptions must, unfortunately, lack the element of personal observation, being drawn almost entirely from hearsay.
My grandfather's cynicism could not always have been so pronounced as at present; they say he was not naturally avaricious, but that he became so in behalf of my father, his only son. He saved and pinched for him, laying by thousands upon thousands, buying estate after estate only to assure his favourite a position for which a prince might envy him.
Finally he procured him an appointment as attaché in the Austrian Legation in Paris, and when papa spent double his allowance the old man only laughed and said, "Youth must have its swing." But when my father married a poor girl of the middle class, my grandfather simply banished him from his heart, and would have nothing more to do with him.
After this papa slowly consumed the small property he had inherited from his mother, and at his death nothing of it was left.
Uncle Paul was the only one of the family who still clung to my father after his mésalliance,--the one eccentricity which had never been set down in the Leskjewitsch programme. When mamma in utter destitution applied to him for help, he went to my grandfather, told him of the desperate extremity to which she was reduced, and entreated him to do something for her and for me. My grandfather merely replied that he did not support vagabonds.
My cousin Heda, whose custom it is to tell every one of everything disagreeable she hears said about them,--for conscience' sake, that they may know whom to mistrust,--furnished me with these details.
The upshot of the interview was, first, that my uncle Paul quarrelled seriously with my grandfather, and, second, that he resolved to go to Paris forthwith and see that matters were set right.