I was taught from an early age that a man should leave behind him sufficient evidence that he had deserved his place in the world. His name ought to be attached to good works, his judgment sought in serious matters, his table hospitable, his library well appointed, and his household governed without scandal. If fortune granted him distinction, he was to receive it modestly; if adversity visited him, he was to endure it without making a spectacle of the wound.
Accordingly, I imagined the life that would one day be mine.
The house stood upon rising ground, approached through an avenue of trees whose branches met high above the road. Its western face caught the last light of evening. Within were marble halls, galleries of ancestral portraits, cabinets of medals and correspondence, and rooms set apart for music, study, and the reception of persons whose names carried consequence beyond the gates.
There would be books in several languages, some inherited and some acquired through long discipline. There would be maps bearing the routes of journeys undertaken in service, and objects brought home from cities where my duties had called me. Above the principal stair would hang the emblems of station lawfully earned: the seal, the sword, the laurel, the device of the house. No honor would be displayed without cause. No title would exceed the labor by which it had been obtained.
Visitors would be shown the great chamber where treaties had been considered, the south room where scholars and musicians had once gathered, and the long gallery in which the family victories were recorded. The guide would speak of fidelity, endurance, and the restoration of the estate after years of neglect. It would be said that I had taken what was disordered and given it form.
My name would appear correctly in the register.
There would be no uncertainty regarding my education, my employment, my means, or my right to stand beneath the painted arms of the house. No one entering those rooms would wonder by what indulgence I had been admitted. The marble, the books, the measured speech, the laurels darkening beneath their glass—all would testify that I had become a man whom it was reasonable to esteem.
This was the dream as I permitted myself to tell it.
There was another part, seldom acknowledged and never entered into the official account.
In that same house, after the guests had departed and the servants had extinguished the greater number of lamps, one room would remain lit. You would be there, reading beside the fire, familiar with every sound the old house made at night.
You would have seen the honors often enough that they no longer impressed you. You would know which books I had truly read and which I kept near me because I wished to resemble the man who had. You would know where the marble was cracked beneath the carpet, which portraits concealed damp in the walls, and which family stories had been improved through repetition.
You would know that the medals were heavy and that the laurel gathered dust.
It would not be necessary to explain any of this to you.
I had imagined that achievement would make affection safe. I thought I must first surround myself with proofs, so that no one—not even you—could be accused of poor judgment.
I wanted to be loved before the evidence was presented.
It was a desire unworthy of the house, contrary to dignity and station, and I could scarcely admit it in solitude.
I wanted you to know the ordinary man beneath the robes of office, beneath the education, the good name, the accomplished life. I wanted the doors to close upon the galleries and the emblems, and for none of them to matter in the room where you found me.
Had the estate been lost, had the titles been revoked, had my name been struck from every honorable record; had the books been sold, the marble broken, the portraits carried away and the house left open to the weather—I wished to believe that you would still have recognized me among the ruins.
Not as the former master of the house.
Not as the man I had labored to become.
Only as the one who had hoped, beneath all that grandeur, to be chosen without cause.
I could speak freely of duty, prestige, sacrifice, inheritance, and victory.
I could not speak of this.
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