Once, when he was
beginning to get sober, he told me that I was the only rational
being in the Inferno into which he had descended--a Virgil in the
Shades, he said--and that, in return for my tobacco, he would,
before he died, give me the materials of a new Inferno that should
make me greater than Dante. Then he fell asleep on a horse-blanket
and woke up quite calm.
"Man," said he, "when you have reached the uttermost depths of
degradation, little incidents which would vex a higher life, are to
you of no consequence. Last night, my soul was among the gods; but
I make no doubt that my bestial body was writhing down here in the
garbage."
"You were abominably drunk if that's what you mean," I said.
"I WAS drunk--filthy drunk. I who am the son of a man with whom you
have no concern--I who was once Fellow of a College whose buttery-
hatch you have not seen. I was loathsomely drunk. But consider how
lightly I am touched. It is nothing to me. Less than nothing; for
I do not even feel the headache which should be my portion. Now, in
a higher life, how ghastly would have been my punishment, how bitter
my repentance! Believe me, my friend with the neglected education,
the highest is as the lowest--always supposing each degree extreme.
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