or not the sentences were just, the judges should have sometimes
shifted places. I was unable to divine why he fevered me so much. Must I
say it?--He had ceased to entertain me. Instead of a comic I found him
a tragic spectacle; and his exuberant anticipations, his bursting
hopes that fed their forcing-bed with the blight and decay of their
predecessors, his transient fits of despair after a touch at my pulses,
and exclamation of 'Oh, Richie, Richie, if only I had my boy up and
well!'--assuming that nothing but my tardy recovery stood in the way
of our contentment--were examples of downright unreason such as
contemplation through the comic glass would have excused; the tragic
could not. I knew, nevertheless, that to the rest of the world he was a
progressive comedy: and the knowledge made him seem more tragic still.
He clearly could not learn from misfortune; he was not to be contained.
Money I gave him freely, holding the money at my disposal his own; I
chafed at his unteachable spirit, surely one of the most tragical things
in life; and the proof of my love for him was that I thought it so,
though I should have been kinder had he amused me, as in the old days.

Conceive to yourself the keeping watch over a fountain choked in its
spouting, incessantly labouring to spin a jet into the air; now for a
moment glittering and towering in a column, and once more straining to
mount. My father appeared to me in that and other images. He would
have had me believe him shooting to his zenith, victorious at last. I
likewise was to reap a victory of the highest kind from the attack of
the mysterious ruffians; so much; he said, he thought he could assure
me of. He chattered of an intimidated Government, and Dettermain and
Newson; duchesses, dukes, most friendly; innumerable invitations to
country castles; and among other things one which really showed him to
be capable of conceiving ideas and working from an initiative. But this,
too, though it accomplished a temporary service, he rendered illusory
to me by his unhappy manner of regarding it as an instance of his now
permanent social authority. He had instituted what he called his JURY OF
HONOUR COURT, composed of the select gentlemen of the realm, ostensibly
to weigh the causes of disputes between members of their class, and
decree the method of settlement: but actually, my father admitted, to
put a stop to the affair between Edbury and me.

'That was the origin of the notion, Richi