382
PARTISAN REVIEW
that, but it did not report what book it was that Gilbert's riding crop
tapped. It is not important what book it was. Or perhaps it is
im–
portant, for something in our mind, in our imagination, wants to
know the fact. We see the red, square, strong hand ("My brother is
strong-made and florid") protruding from the white cuff, grasping
the crop which in that grasp looks fragile like a twig. We see the flick
of the little leather loop on the open page, a flick brisk, not quite con–
temptuous, but we cannot make out the page.
In any case, it probably was not a book on theology, for it seems
doubtful that Gilbert, in such a case, would have used the phrase
"make something out of that." It might have been a page of the Latin
poets, however, for Gilbert would have discovered that, in small doses,
they went well with politics or the law. So Transylvania College it
was to be, suggested, it developed, by Gilbert's neighbor and friend,
Mr. Davis, Mr. Jefferson Davis, who had once been a student there.
Mr. Davis had studied Greek.
At Transylvania, in Lexington, Cass discovered pleasure. "I
dis–
covered that there is an education for vice as well as for virtue, and I
learned what was to be learned from the gaming table, the bottle,
and the racecourse, and from the illicit sweetness of the flesh." He had
come out of the poverty of the cabin and the monastic regime of
Val–
halla
and the responsibilities of his own little plantation; and he was
tall and strong and, to judge from the photograph, well favored, with
the burning dark eyes. It was no wonder that he "discovered pleas–
ure"-or that pleasure discovered him. For, though the journal does
not say so, in the events leading up to the "darkness and trouble,"
Cass seems to have been, in the beginning at least, the pursued rather
than the pursuer.
The pursuer is referred to in the journal as "She" and "Her."
But I learned the name. "She" was Annabelle Trice, Mrs. Duncan
Trice, and Mr. Duncan Trice was a prosperous young banker of
Lexington, Kentucky, who was an intimate of Cass Mastern and ap–
parently one of those who led him into the paths of pleasure. I learned
the name by going back to the files of the Lexington newspapers for
the middle 1850's to locate the story of a death. It was the death of
Mr. Duncan Trice. In the newspaper it was reported as an accident.
Duncan Trice had shot himself by accident, the newspaper said, while
cleaning a pair of pistols. One of the pistols, already cleaned, lay on
the cou...h where he had been sitting, in his library, at the time of the
accident. The other, the lethal instrument, had fallen to the floor.
I had known, from the journal, the nature of the case, and when I
