“Yesterday, my friend, you were a great man; to-day, you are a prig.” “You are right. Yesterday, a great man stooping to foulness; to-day, a mediocrity aspiring to virtue.” “Well, my dear boy,” said the solicitor earnestly, “my last words are these. Be guided by your talent. Greatness is written all over you; it is in your eyes; it proceeds out of your mouth. Play up to your destiny, like a wise fellow, and leave hymns and sermons and disquisitions upon morality to the official purveyors of those condiments.” “You are the devil!” “Well, Faust, dear old boy, if it come to that, it does amuse me sometimes to think that I have not dabbled in human nature in divers forms during the last twenty years without getting to know a little about it. And I put it to you, do you suppose I took the trouble--I, one of the most sagacious criminal lawyers in London--to climb up to this attic without my dinner at ten o’clock of a December night, without having taken your size in hats and your chest measurement?” “I say, you are the devil.” “Your estimate is too liberal. There is nothing of his Satanic Majesty about me; but, all the same, I am always perfectly willing to employ him. I am always prepared to pay him liberally to fight these causes of mine, wherever and whenever he is to be found. What you call the genie is, after all, a euphemism for the devil, although under the more chaste patronymic I failed at first to recognize that elderly swaggerer.” “Well, yes, you are shrewd. But you leave a bad taste in the mouth.” “Everything does that this morning. But I am not surprised that you are feeling cheap. The human frame has to pay for such colossal efforts. In the meantime, you have no need to worry about anything. The mercury will rise again; things will all come right; and you will attain an eminence that few could occupy. In the meantime, divert yourself with these, and mention your own time for the consultation.” Leaving two briefs, one of which was marked with the sum to which he had previously referred, Mr. Whitcomb descended the stairs, much to the relief of the advocate. XXXIII THE HIGHWAY OF THE MANY Success had spread out both hands to Northcote, but the emotion she had aroused in him was not one of gratitude. He had spent many days of suffering, of mental darkness, during the years of his obscurity, but none had engulfed him in such humiliation as this upon which he had entered now. He had tasted coldness and hunger; he had known the stings of rage and despair; but these sensations appeared salutary in comparison with a hopelessness such as this.