I made right for a mirror--lit all the lights, locked the door--back to the mirror. Examined myself front and back, and, with the help of my shaving mirror, my noble profile, too. Result--crushing. A heavy bald pate, bull's neck, puffs under my eyes, double chin, my skin a fiery russet, like a glowing copper kettle. And what was worse than all that--when I looked at myself in all my six feet of bulk, a chandelier went up. I knew why everybody immediately called me a "good fellow." Even in the regiment they used to call me a good fellow. Once you are branded with a Cain's mark like that, the rest of your life turns into nothing but a series of events to prove the truth of it. People come to you with hard-luck stories, you're a butt for their jokes, they blarney you and borrow from you. If once you make a timid attempt to defend yourself, then they say, "Why I thought you were a good fellow!" So you can't get out of it. You are and you remain a good fellow. You've been stamped and sealed. And then you, a good fellow, want to take up with women? With women, who languish for the Mephistophelean, who, to love properly, want to be deserted, duped, and generally maltreated. "Hanckel, don't be an ass," I said to myself. "Go away from the mirror, put out the lights, knock those silly dreams out of your head, and get into bed." Gentlemen, I had a bed--and still have it--a perfectly ordinary bed, as narrow as a coffin, of pine, stained red--no springs, no mattress--a deerskin instead. Twice a year it is filled with fresh straw. That was the extent of my luxury. Gentlemen, there are many stories about the poor camp cots of persons in high life. You see them on exhibition in castles and historical museums, and when the visitors are herded past them, they invariably clasp their hands and dutifully exclaim: "What power of renunciation! What Spartan simplicity!" Buncombe, gentlemen! You can't sleep more comfortably anywhere than on a bed like that--provided, of course, that you have a good day's work _behind_ you, a good conscience _within_ you, and no woman _beside_ you--which all amount to about the same thing. You stretch yourself deliciously until your feet just touch the bottom of the bed, you bite the comfortable a few times, burrow in the pillows, reach out for a good book lying on the table next to the bed, and groan from sheer bliss. That's what I did that night after the tempter had left me, and as I slowly dozed off I thought: "Well, well, no woman will make you traitor to your dear, hard, narrow bachelor's sack of straw, even if her name is Iolanthe, and even if she is the finest thoroughbred that ever galloped about on God's lovely pastures. "Perhaps all the less so. "Because--who knows?" CHAPTER III The next day I turned in my report to the boy--leaving out my asininities, of course. He glowered at me with his dark eyes, and said: "Let's say no more about it. I thought so."