To love a character is
only the heroic way of understanding it. When we love, by
some noble method of our own or some nobility of mien or
nature in the other, we apprehend the loved one by what is
noblest in ourselves. When we are merely studying an
eccentricity, the method of our study is but a series of
allowances. To begin to understand is to begin to
sympathise; for comprehension comes only when we have stated
another's faults and virtues in terms of our own. Hence the
proverbial toleration of artists for their own evil
creations. Hence, too, it came about that Dick Naseby, a
high-minded creature, and as scrupulous and brave a gentleman
as you would want to meet, held in a sort of affection the
various human creeping things whom he had met and studied.
One of these was Mr. Peter Van Tromp, an English-speaking,
two-legged animal of the international genus, and by
profession of general and more than equivocal utility. Years
before he had been a painter of some standing in a colony,
and portraits signed 'Van Tromp' had celebrated the greatness
of colonial governors and judges. In those days he had been
married, and driven his wife and infant daughter in a pony
trap. What were the steps of his declension? No one exactly
knew. Here he was at least, and had been any time these past
ten years, a sort of dismal parasite upon the foreigner in
Paris.
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