ought to come from a great man. Painful as
the avowal is, I am not a great man! Elements
of greatness I have in me, it is true; but there
are wants, deficiencies, small little details many
of them—rivets and bolts, as it were—without
which the machinery can't work; and I know
this, and I feel it.

This digression has all grown out of my unwillingness
to mention what mention I must—
that I passed my night at the little inn on the
table where we supped. I had not courage to
assert the right to my bed in the count's room,
and so I wrapped myself in my cloak, and with
my carpet-bag for a pillow, tried to sleep. It
was no use—the most elastic spring-mattress and
a down cushion would have failed that night to
lull me. I was outraged beyond endurance:
she had slighted, he had insulted me! Such a
provocation as he gave me could have but one
expiation. He could not, by any pretext, refuse
me satisfaction. But was I as ready to ask it?
Was it so very certain that I would insist upon
this reparation? He was certain to wound, he
might kill me! I believe I cried over that
thought. To be cut off in the bud of one's
youth, in the very spring-time of one's enjoyment
—I could not say of one's utility—to go down
unnoticed to the grave, never appreciated, never
understood, with vulgar and mistaken judgments
upon one's character and motives! I thought
my heart would burst with the affliction of
such a picture, and I said, "No, Potts, live
—live, and reply to such would-be slanderers
by the exercise of the qualities of your great
nature." Numberless beautiful little episodes
came thronging to my memory, of good men,
men whose personal gallantry had won them
a world-wide renown, refusing to fight a
duel. "We are to storm the citadel tomorrow,
colonel," said one; "let us see which
of us will be first up the breach." How I
loved that fellow for his speech, and I tortured
my mind how, as there was no citadel to be
carried by assault, I could apply its wisdom to
my own case. What if I were to say, "Count,
the world is before us—a world full of trials
and troubles. With the common fortune of
humanity, we are certain each of us to have
our share. What if we meet on this spot,
say ten years hence, and see who has best acquitted
himself in the conflict?" I wonder
what he would say. The Germans are a strange,
imaginative, dreamy sort of folk. Is it not
likely that he would be struck by a notion so
undeniably original? Is it not probable that
he would seize my hand with rapture, and say,
"Ja! I agree"? Still it is possible that he might
not; he might be one of those vulgar matter-of-
fact creatures who will regard nothing through
the tinted glass of fancy; he might ridicule the
project, and tell it at breakfast as a joke. I
felt almost smothered as this notion crossed me.

I next bethought me of the privileges of my
rank. Could I, as an R.H., accept the vulgar
hazards of a personal encounter? Would not
such conduct be derogatory in one to whom
great destinies might one day be committed?
Not that I lent myself, be it remarked, to the
delusion of being a prince; but that I felt, if
the line of conduct would be objectionable to
men in my rank and condition, it inevitably
followed that it must be bad. What I could
neither do as the descendant of St. Louis, or
the son of Peter Potts, must needs be wrong.
These were the grievous meditations of that
long, long night; and, though I arose from the
hard table, weary, and with aching bones, I
blessed the pinkish-grey light that ushered in
the day. I had scarcely completed a very rapid
toilet, when François came with a message from
Mrs. Keats, "hoping I had rested well, and
begging to know at what hour it was my pleasure
to continue the journey." There was an
evident astonishment in the fellow's face at the
embassy with which he was charged; and
though he delivered the message with reasonable
propriety, there was a certain something in
his look that said, "What delusion is this you
have thrown around the old lady?"

"Say that I am ready, François; that I am
even impatient to be off, and the sooner we start
the better."

This I uttered with all my heart; for I was
eager to get away before the odious German
should be stirring, and could not subdue my
anxiety to avoid meeting him again. There was
every reason to expect that we should get off
unnoticed, and I hastened out myself to order
the horses and stimulate the postilions to greater
activity. This was no labour of love, I promise
you! The sluggardly inertness of that people
passes all belief; entreaties, objurgations, curses,
even bribes could not move them. They never
admitted such a possibility as haste, and
stumped about in their wooden shoes or iron-
bound boots, searching for articles of horse-gear
under bundles of hay or stacks of firewood, as
though it was the very first time in their lives that
post-horses had ever been required in that locality.
"Make a great people out of such materials
as these!" muttered I; "what rubbish to
imagine it! How, with such intolerable apathy,
are they to be moved? Where everything proceeds
at the same regulated slowness, how can
justice ever overtake crime? When can truth
come up with falsehood? Whichever starts
first here, must inevitably win. To urge the
creatures on by example, I assisted with my
own hands to put on the harness; not, I will
own, with much advantage to speed, for I put
the collar on upside down, and, in revenge for
the indignity, the beast planted one of his feet
upon me, and almost drove the cock of his shoe
through my instep. Almost mad with pain and
passion, I limped away into the garden, and sat
down in a damp summer-house. A sleepless
night, a lazy ostler, and a bruised foot, are, after
all, not stunning calamities; but there are
moments when our jarred nerves jangle at the
slightest touch, and even the most trivial inconveniences
grow to the size of afflictions.

"We began to fear you were lost, sir," said
François, breaking in upon my gloomy reverie,
I cannot say how long after. "The horses have