Sleep! There was no more sleep for me for a week. My conscience
tortured me day and night. What I had done I had done purely through
charity, and only to ease the poor youth's fall--I never had dreamed of
any such preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt as
guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein. Here was a
wooden-head whom I had put in the way of glittering promotions and
prodigious responsibilities, and but one thing could happen: he and his
responsibilities would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.
The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course there had to be a war, I
said to myself: we couldn't have peace and give this donkey a chance to
die before he is found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And
it made me reel when it did come. He was actually gazetted to a
captaincy in a marching regiment! Better men grow old and gray in the
service before they climb to a sublimity like that. And who could ever
have foreseen that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on
such green and inadequate shoulders? I could just barely have stood it
if they had made him a cornet; but a captain--think of it! I thought my
hair would turn white.
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