Head Winds

There was no doing anything with or for these people. The fiat for
their overthrow had evidently been issued. The fatuity which leads
to self-destruction was fixed upon them; and, with a feeling rather
of commiseration than anger, I prepared to leave the house. In this
interview, I made a discovery, which tended still more to lessen
the hostility I might otherwise have felt toward my uncle. I
was constrained to perceive that he labored under an intellectual
feebleness and incertitude which disconcerted his expression, left
his thoughts seemingly without purpose, and altogether convinced
me that, if not positively imbecile in mind and memory, there were
yet some ugly symptoms of incapacity growing upon him which might
one day result in the loss of both. I had always known him to be a
weak-minded man, disposed to vanity and caprice, but the weakness
had expanded very much in a brief period, and now presented itself to
my view in sundry very salient aspects. It was easy now to divert
his attention from the business which he had in hand--a single casual
remark of courtesy or observation would have this effect--and then
his mind wandered from the subject with all the levity and caprice
of a thoughtless damsel. He seemed to entertain now no sort of
apprehension of his legal difficulties, and spoke of them as topics
already adjusted. Nay, for that matter, he seemed to have no serious
sense of any subject, whatever might be its personal or general
interest; but, passing from point to point, exhibited that
instability of mental vision which may not inaptly be compared to
that wandering glance which is usually supposed to distinguish and
denote, in the physical eye, the presence of insanity. It was not
often now that he indulged, while speaking to me, in that manner of
hostility--those sneers and sarcastic remarks--which had been his
common habit. This was another proof of the change which his mental
man had undergone. It was not that he was more prudent or more
tolerant than before. He was quite as little disposed to be generous
toward me. But he now appeared wholly incapable of that degree
of intellectual concentration which could enable him to examine
a subject to its close. He would begin to talk with me seriously
enough, and with a due solemnity, about the suit against him;
but, in a tangent, he would dart off to the consideration of some
trifle, some household matter, or petty affair, of which, at any
other time, he must have known that his hearers had no wish to hear.
Poor Julia confirmed the conjectures which I entertained, but did
not utter, by telling me that her father had changed very much in
his ways ever since this business had been begun.