his wits.  Sloane has taught him to observe and judge, and Theodore turns round, observes, judges—­him!  He has become quite the critic and analyst.  There is something very pleasant in the discriminations of a conscientious mind, in which criticism is tempered by an angelic charity.  Only, it may easily end by acting on one’s nerves.  At midnight we repaired to the library, to take leave of our host till the morrow—­an attention which, under all circumstances, he rigidly exacts.  As I gave him my hand he held it again and looked at me as he had done on my arrival.  “Bless my soul,” he said, at last, “how much you look like your mother!”

To-night, at the end of my third day, I begin to feel decidedly at home.  The fact is, I am remarkably comfortable.  The house is pervaded by an indefinable, irresistible love of luxury and privacy.  Mr. Frederick Sloane is a horribly corrupt old mortal.  Already in his relaxing presence I have become heartily reconciled to doing nothing.  But with Theodore on one side—­standing there like a tall interrogation-point—­I honestly believe I can defy Mr. Sloane on the other.  The former asked me this morning, with visible solicitude, in allusion to the bit of dialogue I have quoted above on matters of faith, whether I am really a materialist—­whether I don’t believe something?  I told him I would believe anything he liked.  He looked at me a while, in friendly sadness.  “I hardly know whether you are not worse than Mr. Sloane,” he said.

But Theodore is, after all, in duty bound to give a man a long rope in these matters.  His own rope is one of the longest.  He reads Voltaire with Mr. Sloane, and Emerson in his own room.  He is the stronger man of the two; he has the larger stomach.  Mr. Sloane delights, of course, in Voltaire, but he can’t read a line of Emerson.  Theodore delights in Emerson, and enjoys Voltaire, though he thinks him superficial.  It appears that since we parted in Paris, five years ago, his conscience has dwelt in many lands. C’est tout une histoire—­which he tells very prettily.  He left college determined to enter the church, and came abroad with his mind full of theology and Tuebingen.  He appears to have studied, not wisely but too well.  Instead of faith full-armed and serene, there sprang from the labor of his brain a myriad sickly questions, piping for answers.  He went for a winter to Italy, where, I take it, he was not quite so much afflicted as he ought to have been at the sight of the beautiful spiritual repose that he had missed.  It was after this that we spent those three months together in Brittany—­the best-spent months of my long residence in Europe.  Theodore inoculated me, I think, with some of his seriousness, and I just touched him with my profanity; and we agreed together that there were a few good things left—­health, friendship, a summer sky, and the lovely byways of an old French province.  He came home, searched the Scriptures once more, accepted