Late that night, as, back at Staniford Street, I unloaded my pockets of biscuits and treats for the delight of my tutor, he asked me how had gone the dance, and I told him of Lord Dunmore’s rumored ire and his thought of clemency for loyal slaves, and I recalled to Dr. Trefusis that Pro Bono was thought fled to His Lordship’s side.

Said I, “We are an army that but waits to be mustered. We shall join whosoever doth free us first.”

Dr. Trefusis paused in his enjoyment of a rusk. “Oh, my dear boy. Hope as you will. I fear, however — I greatly fear — that on this side, General Howe and his minions are too much affrighted at the wrath of the wealthy to cut the shackles; and on the other, the rebel Congress in Philadelphia is full, leech to luff, of slave-owners who have no earthly enticement or incentive to free their servants and beggar themselves. Their estates would fall to ruin.”

I slowly laid out sweets upon our little table, disheartened by so glum a prognostication. To Dr. Trefusis, I delivered scraps of turkey pulled from a carcass. He approached the flesh with relish, pinning it to his rusk with a thumb and devouring it.

Outside, there was a racket of crows, startled by some passerby in the street. They bickered, and we heard them retreat over the roofs.

I asked my tutor, “Sir, was Mr. Sharpe right? Is everything done for self-interest or profit?”

Dr. Trefusis shrank back, eyed me cannily, and ceased to chew.

I renewed my inquiries. “Sir?”

“The inimitable Locke,” he answered, “saith that mankind is engaged in perpetual uneasiness, and that it is lack which motivates us forward. In our desires, we resemble the action of a two-legged table.”

I watched him eat the heel of his bread. I urged, “You yourself are proof of the selfless benevolence of man. You have submitted yourself to ruin so that you might save me. Surely you are an example of kindness without profit?”

He frowned his thin lips and his lined cheeks. He lay down his bread. He reached out a hand and pushed away the cakes on the table. His water he left idle.

With a harshness of accent not usually his, he said, “I shall relate a fable.” He rearranged himself on his chair, and began: “Let us imagine that there is a man,” said he, “who, when young, traveled about the Continent, enjoying numerous petits amours with young ladies with whom . . . he was not always . . . entirely forward with all aspects of the truth, regarding the length of his stay — nor of anything else, i’faith. . . . Let us note in passing: Voltaire, in his Philosophical Dictionary, maintains that self-love is like the penis: It is necessary; it is dear to us; it gives us pleasure; mankind could not continue without it; and yet things proceed more agreeably, with less of shrieking, when it is stowed.

“Now fancy for thyself that hadst thou asked this youth, ‘Sir, do you love these chambermaids, these milliners’ girls?’ — if thou hadst asked, ‘Do you love your hot-breathed country nuns, smelling of their cattle?’ — he would have vowed upon his honor he loved them indeed . . . and would have swore truthfully that he thought of them often — with noble melancholy — as he slipped away at noon and rode from them forever.

“Let us figure for ourselves that this man, this young libertine, engaged daily in concocting a philosophy of Eros and in visiting the great courts of Europe, heard occasional rumors that the previous year’s late dalliances of a few weeks had borne fruit . . . and that, were he to return west to scenes of earlier pleasure, he would find himself a father several times over. And so, hearing of his paternity, he rode further east — first to Prussia, and later, into the forests of the Magyar.

“Then imagine that youth passed, and manhood, and he crossed the seas, fleeing from court to court, and he came to the end of his years, and discovered he had been loved by none, though his grandchildren, it was not impossible, were spread as thick as Abraham’s through the hovels of Christendom. Imagine that he faced his own dissolution. Imagine that waiting for him on the other side of the grim portal were neither the shrieks of the damned nor the harp glissandi of the saved, but rather the stone chill of a vacuum, the failure of a machine. An instant, and the self ceased.

“Then you might imagine how he longed for one who depended upon him, who said, ‘I shall remember you as one who gave me life.’ Imagine how he might yearn for one whom he might use as a grandchild.”

Hearing his tale, my heart swelled with pity, and I put my hand upon his wrist; but he shook it off. He stood and walked to his bed.

“Altruism,” he concluded, “is the kind of pie best eaten with a lot of gravy and little inspection of the kind of kidney it’s stuffed with.”