Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/159

 into the room where he was sitting, despondent and alone. He greeted them, and asked moodily what their pleasure was. He was their pleasure, they answered, and a very black-looking pleasure he was too. Where had he kept himself? Was he ill? Had he lost money? Did he want to borrow it? Was he going into a fit of melancholia? Was he in love? Or was he purely and simply bilious?

"It 's a case of conscience," said one of the guests; "it has suddenly bloomed, late in life, and Robert is beginning to feel for the first time the pangs which have tormented my entire existence. Is n't that about the case, old man? I have heard him declare, fellows, a hundred times, that he did n't know what the word 'conscience' meant. If he did a wrong thing, he did it with his eyes open, and took the consequences, but never regretted it. He looks to me as if his conscience had struck in."

"No," said another, who was busying himself with opening the wine which had been brought in; "no, it is n't conscience, it 's too much reading. Why, look, this is a dictionary, and here is a book of poems,—De Musset, mon Dieu! and Shakspeare! Too much learning has made him mad. It was high time we came and tracked him to this unhealthy and unwonted lair of erudition. Glasses ready? it' s going to pop."