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It is doubtful whether relations between him and Lincoln were ever again really cordial. In their rather full correspondence during the tense days of April, May and June, the steady deterioration of McClellan's judgment bore him down into amazing depths of fatuousness. In his own way he was as much appalled by the growth of his responsibility as ever Lincoln had been.
Kohn would try hard to be silent: but he could not do it: at once he would begin again to sniffle, sigh, whistle, beat time, hum, imitate the various instruments. And when the piece was ended he would have burst if he had not given Christophe the benefit of his inept comment. He was a queer mixture of German sentimentality, Parisian humbug, and intolerable fatuousness.
It did not occur to him other than to go down with his ship the old tradition. The fatuousness of this appealed suddenly to Bedient. Carreras was his friend the only other white man left. The two mates and boatswain had tried out the first two boats eagerly. Bedient ran to the wheel, tore the Captain from it and carried him in his arms toward the stern.
He had the fatuousness of those who deceive with impunity. With confidence he unreeled the dark line out to the end. When he had told his story, still hungry for applause, he repeated the account of how the tatterdemalion brigade of Frenchmen came down upon him out of the night, and how he should have killed Rullecour himself had it not been for an officer who struck him down from behind.
He went into the dining-room like a man in a dream. He had come out to this place to see Lady Caroline, and had told her so. He had even told her in his fatuousness it was true, but how fatuous that he hadn't been able to help coming. She didn't know he was married. She thought his name was Arundel. Everybody in London thought his name was Arundel.
There is more deep love of humanity in this than in giving many alms, and it was not the less deep for being the product of impulse and sympathetic emotion, and not of a logical sorites. Another scene in a café is worth referring to, because it shows in the same way that at this time Rousseau's egoism fell short of the fatuousness to which disease or vicious habit eventually depraved it.
In both orders alike there is only too much of this kind of fatuousness, this readiness to believe that for once in our favour the stream shall flow up hill, that we may live in miasmatic air unpoisoned, that a government may depress the energy, the self-reliance, the public spirit of its citizens, and yet be able to count on these qualities whenever the government itself may have broken down, and left the country to make the best of such resources as are left after so severe and prolonged a drain.
At Oliphantsfontein they erected a new camp and made their fortifications unassailable. We could only conclude that they purposed making a stand. The fatuousness of such a course was clear to us; for with the aid of the Relief Column we would presently be in a position to attack the Boers from many sides; to hem them in; to cut off retreat; and to kill or make prisoners of them all.
Mr. Higgs paid no heed. He sat marvelling over the fatuousness of Brother Clark and trying to think of ways and means out of the dilemma into which that gentleman's perverted enthusiasm had placed him. He wondered whether it would be possible to induce Brother Burge to sleep elsewhere by offering to bear his hotel expenses, and at last, after some hesitation, broached the subject.
"Let me only get there," he had said with the fatuousness of Crusoe over his big boat, "and the rest is but a matter of time and energy." It would have been far better for him in every way if he had never come within sight and sound of the delusive precincts, had gone to some busy commercial town with the sole object of making money by his wits, and thence surveyed his plan in true perspective.
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