"Yes," said Father Payne, "that's about it. His mind is too big for him to carry. He sees everything, understands everything, and passes judgment on everything. But he hasn't enough vitality. It must be an awful curse to have no illusions--to see the inferiority of everything so clearly. He's awfully lonely, and I must try to see more of him. But it is very difficult. I used to amuse him, and he appointed me, in a way he has, a sort of State Jester--Royal Letters Patent, you know. But then he began to detect the commonness of my mind and taste, and, one by one, all the avenues of communication became closed. If I liked a book which he disliked, and praised it to him, he became inflicted with a kind of mental nausea: and it's impossible to see much of a man, with any real comfort, when you realise that you are constantly turning him faint and sick. I had a dreary time with him yesterday. He produced some critical essays of his own, which he was thinking of making into a book. They were awfully dry, like figs which have been kept too long--not a drop of juice in them. They were hideously acute, I saw that. But there wasn't any reason why they should have been written. They were mere dissections: I suggested that he should call them 'Depreciations,' and he shivered, and I felt a brute. But that didn't last long, because he has a way of putting you in your place. I felt like something in a nightmare he was having. He annexes you, and he disapproves of you at the same time. I am awfully sorry for him, but I can't help him. The moment I try, I run up against his disapproval, and my vulgar spirit revolts. He's an aristocrat, through and through. He comes and hoists his flag over a place. I felt all yesterday as if I were a rather unwelcome guest in his house, you know. It's a stifling atmosphere. I can't breathe or speak, because I instantly feel myself suspected of crudity! The truth is that Gladwin thinks you can live upon light, and forgets that you also want air." "It seems rather a ghastly business," I said. "Yes," said Father Payne, "it's a wretched business! That combination of great sensitiveness and great self-righteousness is the most melancholy thing I know. You have to get rid of one or the other--and yet that is how Gladwin is made. Now, I have plenty of opinions of my own, but I don't consider them final or absolute. It ends, of course, in poor Gladwin knowing about a hundredth part of what is going on in the world, and thinking that it's d--d bad. Of course it is, if you neglect the other ninety-nine parts altogether!" XLIV OF WORSHIP