"
"I thank God I am not able--if those are the signs. But yet I am an
earl's son and heir. It is all I can say. I wish you would believe me,
but you will not. I know no way to persuade you."
She was about to soften again, but his closing remark made her bring her
foot down with smart vexation, and she cried out:
"Oh, you drive all patience out of me! Would you have one believe that
you haven't your proofs at hand, and yet are what you say you are?
You do not put your hand in your pocket now--for you have nothing there.
You make a claim like this, and then venture to travel without
credentials. These are simply incredibilities. Don't you see that,
yourself?"
He cast about in his mind for a defence of some kind or other--hesitated
a little, and then said, with difficulty and diffidence:
"I will tell you just the truth, foolish as it will seem to you--
to anybody, I suppose--but it is the truth. I had an ideal--call it
a dream, a folly, if you will--but I wanted to renounce the privileges
and unfair advantages enjoyed by the nobility and wrung from the nation
by force and fraud, and purge myself of my share of those crimes against
right and reason, by thenceforth comrading with the poor and humble on
equal terms, earning with my own hands the bread I ate, and rising by my
own merit if I rose at all.
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