Together they brought the body down, and Doltaire followed it to
the burying-ground; keeping the gravedigger at his task when he
would have run away, and saying the responses to the priest in the
short service read above the grave.

I said to him then, "You rail at the world and scoff at men and
many decencies, and yet you do these things!"

To this he replied--he was in my own lodgings at the time--"The
brain may call all men liars and fools, but the senses feel the
shock of misery which we do not ourselves inflict. Inflicting,
we are prone to cruelty, as you have seen a schoolmaster begin
punishment with tears, grow angry at the shrinking back under his
cane, and give way to a sudden lust of torture. I have little pity
for those who can help themselves--let them fight or eat the leek;
but the child and the helpless and the sick it is a pleasure to
aid. I love the poor as much as I love anything. I could live their
life, if I were put to it. As a gentleman, I hate squalor and the
puddles of wretchedness but I could have worked at the plough or
the anvil; I could have dug in the earth till my knuckles grew big
and my shoulders hardened to a roundness, have eaten my beans and
pork and pea-soup, and have been a healthy ox, munching the bread
of industry and trailing the puissant pike, a diligent serf. I have
no ethics, and yet I am on the side of the just when they do not
put thorns in my bed to keep me awake at night!"

Upon the walls hung suits of armour, swords of beautiful make,
spears, belts of wonderful workmanship, a tattered banner, sashes
knit by ladies' fingers, pouches, bandoleers, and many strong
sketches of scenes that I knew well. Now and then a woman's head in