"We are all alone now," said the counsellor, "and I may therefore speak more from my heart to such old friends. It is true, this sensual enjoyment gives me pleasure, and will console me at times for the want of much: but I am not the frivolous person you take me for, perhaps never was so. Almost everybody has a mask; and this is mine. I move about in it lightly and with ease, and so most people take it for my real character. My youth was a very sad one: my parents displayed all their weaknesses, their extravagance and ostentation, so glaringly to me and to all the world, that I could not look upon them with esteem; and this to a young man is of all feelings the most terrible. Poverty and distress, privations of every kind may be borne much more easily: but a calamity like mine crushes the heart before it is yet grown up. I had to play the part of a rich man, to squander money, to give myself airs. When one puts on the semblance of anything for a time, it will soon become a portion of our nature. Imitate a stutterer for a while, and you will have to keep diligent watch over yourself not to stammer in earnest. I fell in love, and was on the point of changing into a totally different person; for my passion was sincere and ardent. But new distress. The noble being who soon became my wife, could never give me her heart. The strongest passion must die away when it finds no return; and in such a case a man has done enough, if this finest feeling of his nature do not turn into hatred and malice. For myself I was thrown back by this into my apparent frivolity: and not to make a show of my unhappiness, like my wife, who, though otherwise admirable, gave way too much to this weakness, I abandoned myself to riotous conviviality, turbulent pleasures, and unprofitable society. There is often a spirit of defiance in us, having something of nobleness in it, and not utterly condemnable, which withholds strong characters from reforming and improving, notwithstanding all the admonitions of conscience. The more unhappy I felt myself, the more I acted happiness. After my son was born, my wife began to shun me altogether, and would often wilfully misunderstand me. She devoted all her affection and care to her child, lived only for him, and brought him up to be so capricious and headstrong, that she herself was the greatest sufferer by his faults, and yet had not strength of mind enough to eradicate the fatal perverseness, which she herself had first fostered in him. My advice was not listened to: it had been taken for granted that I could no more love the child, than appreciate and esteem the mother. My heart bled; and yet I could not interfere authoritatively, unless I would consent to be regarded by her and by the whole world as a monster, being already called a tyrant, unfeeling, and frivolous, and having been so long wont to give up the point that I often lookt on myself as such. Thus my son was bred up as