Chapter 12

"If my father hadn't met with reverses--" the Idiot began.

"Did you really have a father?" interrupted the School-master. "I
thought you were one of these self-made Idiots. How terrible it must be
for a man to think that he is responsible for you!"

"Yes," rejoined the Idiot; "my father finds it rather hard to stand up
under his responsibility for me; but he is a brave old gentleman, and he
manages to bear the burden very well with the aid of my mother--for I
have a mother, too, Mr. Pedagog. A womanly mother she is, too, with all
the natural follies, such as fondness for and belief in her boy. Why, it
would soften your heart to see how she looks on me. She thinks I am the
most everlastingly brilliant man she ever knew--excepting father, of
course, who has always been a hero of heroes in her eyes, because he
never rails at misfortune, never spoke an unkind word to her in his
life, and just lives gently along and waiting for the end of all
things."

[Illustration: "'HIS FAIRY STORIES WERE TOLD HIM IN WORDS OF TEN
SYLLABLES'"]

"Do you think it is right in you to deceive your mother in this
way--making her think you a young Napoleon of intellect when you know
you are an Idiot?" observed the Bibliomaniac, with a twinkle in his eye.

"Why certainly I do," returned the Idiot, calmly. "It's my place to make
the old folks happy if I can; and if thinking me nineteen different
kinds of a genius is going to fill my mother's heart with happiness, I'm
going to let her think it. What's the use of destroying other people's
idols even if we do know them to be hollow mockeries? Do you think you
do a praiseworthy act, for instance, when you kick over the heathen's
stone gods and leave him without any at all? You may not have noticed
it, but I have--that it is easier to pull down an idol than it is to
rear an ideal. I have had idols shattered myself, and I haven't found
that the pedestals they used to occupy have been rented since. They are
there yet and empty--standing as monuments to what once seemed good to
me--and I'm no happier nor no better for being disillusioned. So it is
with my mother. I let her go on and think me perfect. It does her good,
and it does me good because it makes me try to live up to that idea of
hers as to what I am. If she had the same opinion of me that we all have
she'd be the most miserable woman in the world."

"We don't all think so badly of you," said the Doctor, rather softened
by the Idiot's remarks.

"No," put in the Bibliomaniac. "You are all right. You breathe normally,
and you have nice blue eyes. You are graceful and pleasant to look upon,
and if