I got him the money he required; and we were about to set forth,
when he exclaimed abruptly:-"Put money in thy own purse, Clifford. It may be necessary to practise
a little ruse de guerre. In playing my game, it may be important
that you should deem to play one also. You have no scruples to
fling the dice or flirt the cards for the nonce."
"None! But I should like to know your plans. Tell me, in the first
place, your precise object."
"Simply to detect certain knaves, and save certain fools. The
knaves have ruined me, and I make no lamentations; but there are
others in their clutches still, quite as ignorant as myself, who
may be saved before they are stripped entirely. The object is not
a bad one; for the rest, trust to me. I mean no harm; a little
mischief only; and, at most, a tweak of one proboscis or more.
There's risk, of a certainty, as there is in sucking an egg; but
you are a man! Not like that d--d milksop, who gives up his friend
as soon as he gets poor, and proffers him a sermon by way of telling
him--precious information, truly--that he's in a fair way to the
devil. The toss of a copper for such friendship."
The humor of Kingsley tallied somewhat with my own. It had in it
a spice of recklessness which pleased me. Perhaps, too, it tended
somewhat to relieve and qualify the intenseness of that excitement
in my brain, which sometimes rose to such a pitch as led me
to apprehend madness. That I was a monomaniac has been admitted,
perhaps not a moment too soon for the author's candor. The sagacity
of the reader made him independent of the admission.
"Your beggar," said he, somewhat abruptly, "has the only true feeling
of independence. Absolutely, I never knew till now what it was to
be thoroughly indifferent to what might come to-morrow. I positively
care for nothing. I am the first prince Sans Souci. That shall
be my title when I get among the Cumanches. I will have a code of
laws and constitution to suit my particular humor, and my chief
penalties shall be inflicted upon your fellows who grunt. A sigh
shall incur a week's solitary confinement; a sour look, pillory;
and for a groan, the hypochondriac shall lose his head! My prime
minister shall be the fellow who can longest use his tongue without
losing his temper; and the man who can laugh and jest shall always
have his plate at my table. Good-humored people shall have peculiar
privileges. It shall be a certificate in one's favor, entitling
him to so many acres, that he takes the world kindly. Such a man
shall have two wives, provided he can keep them peacefully in the
same house. His daughters shall have dowries from government. The
prince of Sans Souci will himself provide for them."