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. M'Kay said, and said truly,
that many poor persons would buy these goods who could buy nothing
else, and that Cardinal, before yielding to such scruples, ought to
satisfy himself that, by yielding, he would not become a burden upon
others less fanciful. This was just what happened. Cardinal could
get no work again for a long time, and had to borrow money. I was
sorry; but for my part, this and other eccentricities did not disturb
my confidence in him. He was an honest, affectionate soul, and his
peculiarities were a necessary result of the total chaos of a time
without any moral guidance. With no church, no philosophy, no
religion, the wonder is that anybody on whom use and wont relax their
hold should ever do anything more than blindly rove hither and
thither, arriving at nothing. Cardinal was adrift, like thousands
and hundreds of thousands of others, and amidst the storm and pitchy
darkness of the night, thousands and hundreds of thousands of voices
offer us pilotage. It spoke well for him that he did nothing worse
than take a few useless phantoms on board which did him no harm, and
that he held fast to his own instinct for truth and goodness. I
never let myself be annoyed by what he produced to me from his books.
All that I discarded. Underneath all that was a solid worth which I
loved, and which was mostly not vocal. What was vocal in him was, I
am bound to say, not of much value.

About the time when our room opened, Mrs. Cardinal had become almost
insupportable to her husband. Poor woman; I always pitied her; she
was alone sometimes for a fortnight at a stretch; she read nothing;