“Come, come! do not calumniate yourself. We must neither judge ourselves with too much leniency nor with too much severity. We must see ourselves as we are. This is difficult, but it is essential.”
“Well, my kind friend, that is exactly the way I regard myself.”
“I doubt it.”
“You shall judge for yourself. My duties oblige me to remain night and day at St. M——. Alas! this very necessity I find harder than I can express. There is not a day in which I do not find myself regretting the city three or four times. This is very wrong, when the city has been so pernicious to me....”
“Come, you exaggerate things. You were born and brought up in the city, and have always lived here till now. I see nothing astonishing at your finding it disagreeable at first to live in the country.”
“What a lenient judge! We shall see if you are as much so after the other acknowledgments I have to make. There are times when work seems insupportable. To rise at six o’clock and superintend workmen and machinery the live-long day irritates and fatigues me to such a degree that I am sometimes tempted to give it all up.”
“You have not yet yielded to the temptation?”
“No, indeed; that would be too despicable.”
“Since you yourself regard such a step as it deserves, pursue your occupation without being concerned about a slight disinclination for work. Even people who have always been accustomed to labor have such temptations. I assure you, in a year there will be no question of all this. You will have acquired a love for your business, and, active as you are, you will not be able to do without it.”
“You think me at the end of my confession. The worst is to come. Mr. Smithson is polite and sincere, but reserved and ceremonious, like all Englishmen. He keeps me at a distance, and appears as if my errors and loss of property, which of course he is aware of, gave him some superiority over me. I think he does wrong to make me feel this.”