Schumacker folded his arms, and raised his eyes to heaven. “Yes, that is the way with them all. You cannot praise a worthy man in their presence, that they do not instantly seek to disparage him. They poison everything, even the pleasure of just praise, rare as it is.”
“If you knew me, you would not accuse me of disparaging Gener—I mean, Captain Levin.”
“Nonsense! nonsense,” said the prisoner; “for loyalty and generosity, there were never two men like this Levin de Knud, and to say a word to the contrary is both an outrageous slander and a flattery of this miserable human race.”
“I assure you,” returned the general, trying to assuage Schumacker’s wrath, “that I have not the slightest intention of wronging Levin de Knud.”
“Do not say that. Although he was so foolish, the rest of mankind is anything but like him. They are a false, ungrateful, envious set of slanderers. Do you know that Levin de Knud gave more than half his income to the Copenhagen hospitals?”
“I did not know that you knew it.”
“There it is!” triumphantly exclaimed the old man. “You thought that you could safely brand him, trusting to my ignorance of the poor fellow’s good deeds!”
“Not at all, not at all!”
“Do you suppose, too, that I don’t know that he persuaded the king to give the regiment which he intended for him, to an officer who had wounded him in a duel, because, he said, the other outranked him?”