L'ambition, l'amour, l'avarice, la haine, Tiennent comme un forcat son esprit a la chaine.--_Boileau_. Nobody knew Vinal but Vinal himself. _Know thyself_ was his favorite maxim. He practised upon it, as he flattered himself, with a rigorous and unsparing logic, applying the dissecting knife and microscope to the secrets of his mind, probing, testing, studying, pitilessly ripping up all that would fain hide itself. The aim of all this scrutiny was, thoroughly to comprehend the machine, in order to direct and perfect it to its highest efficiency. Vinal, as men go, knew himself very well; and yet there were points of his character which escaped him, or which, rather, he misnamed. He knew perfectly that he was ambitious, selfish, unscrupulous: this he confessed in his own ear, pluming himself much on his philosophic candor. But he never would see that he was envious. In his mental map of himself, envy was laid down as pride and emulation. The wrestlings of human nature are not all of the sort figured in the Pilgrim's Progress and set forth in the Catechism. Vinal had an ideal; he had cherished it from boyhood, and battled ever since to realize it. He would fain make himself the finished man of the world, the unflinching, all-knowing, all-potential man of affairs, like a blade of steel, smooth and polished, but keen, searching, resistless. This was his aim; but nature was always balking him. He was the victim of a constitutional timidity, his scourge from childhood. He had been known to swoon outright, on being run away with in a chaise, and he never could muster nerve enough to fire a gun. Against this defect his pride rose in revolt. It thwarted him at every turn, and conflicted with all his aspirations. In short, he could not endure its presence, and fought against it with an iron energy of will. Thus his life was a secret, unremitting struggle, whose mark was written on his pale, nervous, resolute features. It's an ill wind that blows no good. This painful warfare achieved a singular vigor and concentration of character, and would have led to still better issues, had the assailing force been marshalled under a better banner. A lofty purpose may turn timidity to heroism; but a purpose like Vinal's is by no means so efficacious, and the man remains, if not quite a coward, yet something very like one. It would have been well for Vinal if, like Morton, he had been born to a fortune. In that case--for he had no aptitude for pleasure hunting--his restless energies would probably have spurred him into some creditable field of effort, natural science, mathematics, or philology, to all of which he inclined. But Fate had not been so propitious; and to achieve the task which she had forgotten was the zenith of his aspirations.