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Updated: June 12, 2025
Simon, forsooth! why, his doctrine was, that, to comprehend the nature of crime, one had first to commit crime himself. Pah! according to that, he who would most thoroughly learn the philosophy of our carnal lusts must exchange natures with the goat. Pray, why do not you solicit Herr Urian to give you a hircine metamorphosis, Clarian?"
As he read on, he commented, in his brief, pointed way, upon the text, contrasting the Boatswain's practical usefulness with the shivering helplessness of the Courtiers. "Now this is your proper somatology," he added. "What our Bo's'un says to Gonzalo, the world will say to you, Clarian, when you propose to it any of your panaceas: Are you able to do better than we?
I was in the heyday and blossom of my youth then, and now well, 'tis some years since; yet how vividly I remember that pleasant noontide of a day of early summer, when, as a party of us students were lounging about the gates that opened from our shady campus upon the street, "Dennis" handed me a note from Clarian, in which my little friend announced that his picture was finished at last, and invited Mac and myself to call and see it "exhibited," at nine o'clock that very evening.
Besides this, he was ever on the point of telling us something, which he yet failed of courage to put into words; and Thorne, noticing this, when, one day, we were all seated round the bed, while the lad fixed his shaded, large, mournful eyes upon us with a painfully imploring look, said suddenly, his fingers upon Clarian's pulse, "You have something to say to us, a confession to make, Clarian."
Clarian's Picture! what memories the mention of it stirred up! "Poor Clarian!" I murmured. "Poor, indeed I" repeated Mac, with a sneer. "He is only worth a lovely wife and six children, with half a million to back them. And he only weighs two hundred pounds, with I forget how many inches of fat over the brisket. Poor, indeed!
Under that strange patchwork quilt so imaginative a soul as Clarian could not fail to dream. It was a great pity I had not been more circumspect, for the boy was already too deeply steeped in those Acherontic waters.
As he spoke, he touched the salver with a lighted match, so that a blue alcoholic flame flickered up before the curtain, making the poor lad's face seem more ghastly than ever. "You must sit down, Clarian," cried Dr. Thorne, resolutely. Clarian smiled again, that dim, uncertain smile, and answered,
Mac, with his sturdy good sense, and unerring mace-like judgment, speedily became aware of this waste of function to which Clarian was subjecting himself, and warned me accordingly. "Why do you let that boy bother his brains about your stupid Ego and Non-Ego?" said he.
Happily for us, ere Clarian was quite beyond recovery, while Mac still tore his hair in rage at his own impotence, while the Doctor still pursued his researches with the sedateness of a philosopher, and I was using what power I had to alleviate my little friend's misery, that subtile and mysterious agency, which, in our blindness and need, we term Chance, interposed its offices, rolled away the cloud from the mystery, and, like a good angel, rescued Clarian, even as he was tottering upon the very brink of the dismal precipice to whose borders he had innocently strayed.
Thorne coming rapidly, accompanied by a stout, middle-aged man, having the dress and appearance of a well-to-do farmer, "Not the thought, simply, 'Thou must die," repeated Clarian, in his plaintive murmur, "but the feeling that all this decay and death is of ourselves, and could be averted by ourselves, had we only self-control, could we only keep ourselves pure, and so be ever near God and of Him.
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