It may easily be
supposed that with a temperament like his, and with nobody near him
to take him by the hand, he made great mistakes. His wife and he
cared nothing for one another, but she was jealous to the last
degree. I never saw such jealousy. It was strange that, although
she almost hated him, she watched him with feline sharpness and
patience, and would even have killed any woman whom she knew had won
his affection. He, on the other hand, openly avowed that marriage
without love was nothing, and flaunted without the least modification
the most ideal theories as to the relation between man and woman.
Not that he ever went actually wrong. His boyish education, his
natural purity, and a fear never wholly suppressed, restrained him.
He exasperated people by his impracticability, and it must be
acknowledged that it is very irritating in a difficult complexity
demanding the gravest consideration--the balancing of this against
that--to hear a man suddenly propose some naked principle with which
everybody is acquainted, and decide by it solely. I came to know him
through M'Kay, who had known him for years; but M'Kay at last broke
out against him, and called him a stupid fool when he threw up a
handsome salary and refused to serve any longer under a house which
had always treated him well, because they, moving with the times, had
determined to offer their customers a cheaper description of goods,
which Cardinal thought was dishonest.
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