“Allow me,” returned the Colonel. “You will permit me to hope that I am addressing Christians? We are all conscious, I trust, that we are miserable sinners.”
“I disown the consciousness,” said Gotthold. “Warmed with this good fluid, I deny your thesis.”
“How, sir? You never did anything wrong? and I heard you asking pardon but this moment, not of your God, sir, but of a common fellow-worm!” the Colonel cried.
“I own you have me; you are expert in argument, Herr Oberst,” said the Doctor.
“Begad, sir, I am proud to hear you say so,” said the Colonel. “I was well grounded indeed at Aberdeen. And as for this matter of forgiveness, it comes, sir, of loose views and (what is if anything more dangerous) a regular life. A sound creed and a bad morality, that’s the root of wisdom. You two gentlemen are too good to be forgiving.”
“The paradox is somewhat forced,” said Gotthold.
“Pardon me, Colonel,” said the Prince; “I readily acquit you of any design of offence, but your words bite like satire. Is this a time, do you think, when I can wish to hear myself called good, now that I am paying the penalty (and am willing like yourself to think it just) of my prolonged misconduct?”
“O, pardon me!” cried the Colonel. “You have never been expelled from the divinity hall; you have never been broke. I was: broke for a neglect of military duty. To tell you the open truth, your Highness, I was the worse of drink; it’s a thing I never do now,” he added, taking out his glass. “But a man, you see, who has really tasted the defects of his own character, as I have, and has come to regard himself as a kind of blind teetotum knocking about life, begins to learn a very different view about forgiveness. I will talk of not forgiving others, sir, when I have made out to forgive myself, and not before; and the date is like to be a long one. My father, the Reverend Alexander Gordon, was a good man, and damned hard upon others. I am what they call a bad one, and that is just the difference. The man who cannot forgive any mortal thing is a green hand in life.”
“And yet I have heard of you, Colonel, as a duellist,” said Gotthold.