Still, with all this passion for being despised, which was so essential to my peace of mind, I found at times an altitude--a starry altitude--in the station of contempt for me assumed by my brother that nettled me. Sometimes, indeed, the mere necessities of dispute carried me, before I was aware of my own imprudence, so far up the staircase of Babel, that my brother was shaken for a moment in the infinity of his contempt; and before long, when my superiority in some bookish accomplishments displayed itself, by results that could not be entirely dissembled, mere foolish human nature forced me into some trifle of exultation at these retributory triumphs. But more often I was disposed to grieve over them. They tended to shake that solid foundation of utter despicableness upon which I relied so much for my freedom from anxiety; and therefore, upon the whole, it was satisfactory to my mind that my brother's opinion of me, after any little transient oscillation, gravitated determinately back towards that settled contempt which had been the result of his original inquest. The pillars of Hercules, upon which rested the vast edifice of his scorn, were these two--1st, my physics; he denounced me for effeminacy; 2d, he assumed, and even postulated as a _datum_, which I myself could never have the face to refuse, my general idiocy. Physically, therefore, and intellectually, he looked upon me as below notice; but, _morally_, he assured me that he would give me a written character of the very best description, whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; "you're willing, though lazy; you _would_ pull, if you had the strength of a flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My own demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they might have been. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was not uniformly an idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority of cases, I really _was_; and there were more reasons for thinking so than the reader is yet aware of. But, as to the effeminacy, I denied it _in toto_; and with good reason, as will be seen. Neither did my brother pretend to have any experimental proofs of it. The ground he went upon was a mere _a priori_ one, viz., that I had always been tied to the apron string of women or girls; which amounted at most to this--that, by training and the natural tendency of circumstances, I _ought_ to be effeminate; that is, there was reason to expect beforehand that I _should_ be so; but, then, the more merit in me, if, in spite of such reasonable presumptions, I really were _not_. In fact, my brother soon learned, by a daily experience, how entirely he might depend upon me for carrying out the most audacious of his own warlike plans--such plans, it is true, that I abominated; but _that_ made no difference in the fidelity with which I tried to fulfil them.