You
must get up early to get the better of a man who has been a parson, and
seen through himself!"
David, in fact, felt himself the superior, intellectually and by
nature, of most of the men he saw. He penetrated and comprehended them,
but to them he was impenetrable; a certain air of authority rested upon
him; he had abandoned the service of God; but the training whereby he
had fitted himself for it stood him in good stead; it had developed his
insight, his subtlety, and, strange to say, his powers of
dissimulation. Contrary to what is popularly supposed, his study of the
affairs of the other world had enabled him to deal with this world's
affairs with a half-contemptuous facility. As for the minor
technicalities, the social pass-words, and so forth, to which much
importance is generally ascribed, David had nothing to fear from them;
first, because he was a man of noble manners, naturally as well as by
cultivation; and, secondly, because the fact that he had been a
clergyman acted as a sort of breastplate against criticism. It would be
thought that he chose to appear ignorant of that which he really knew.
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