Everything which another man would have hidden, everything the
publication of which would have made another man hang himself, was
matter of gay and clamorous exultation to his weak and diseased mind.
What silly things he said, what bitter retorts he provoked, how at one
place he was troubled with evil presentiments which came to nothing, how
at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the
prayer-book and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him, how he went
to see men hanged and came away maudlin, how he added five hundred
pounds to the fortune of one of his babies because she was not scared at
Johnson's ugly face, how he was frightened out of his wits at sea, and
how the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted a child, how
tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one evening and how much his merriment
annoyed the ladies, how impertinent he was to the Duchess of Argyle and
with what stately contempt she put down his impertinence, how Colonel
Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent obtrusiveness, how his
father and the very wife of his bosom laughed and fretted at his
fooleries--all these things he proclaimed to all the world, as if they
had been subjects for pride and ostentatious rejoicings. All the
caprices of his temper, all the illusions of his vanity, all his
hypochondriac whimsies, all his castles in the air, he displayed with a
cool self-complacency, a perfect unconsciousness that he was making a
fool of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in the
whole history of mankind.
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