subject. We have heard nothing from the vagabonds yet. I once thought of
printing the affidavits without a word of comment, and sewing them up
with _Chuzzlewit_. Talfourd is strongly disinclined to compromise with
the printers on any terms. In which case it would be referred to the
master to ascertain what profits had been made by the piracy, and to
order the same to be paid to me. But wear and tear of law is my
consideration." The undertaking to which he had at last to submit was,
that upon ample public apology, and payment of all costs, the offenders
should be let go; but the real result was that, after infinite vexation
and trouble, he had himself to pay all the costs incurred on his own
behalf; and, a couple of years later, upon repetition of the wrong he
had suffered in so gross a form that proceedings were again advised by
Talfourd and others, he wrote to me from Switzerland the condition of
mind to which his experience had brought him. "My feeling about the ----
is the feeling common, I suppose, to three fourths of the reflecting
part of the community in our happiest of all possible countries; and
that is, that it is better to suffer a great wrong than to have recourse
to the much greater wrong of the law. I shall not easily forget the
expense, and anxiety, and horrible injustice of the _Carol_ case,
wherein, in asserting the plainest right on earth, I was really treated
as if I were the robber instead of the robbed. Upon the whole, I
certainly would much rather NOT proceed. What do you think of sending in
a grave protest against what has been done in this case, on account of
the immense amount of piracy to which I am daily exposed, and because I
have been already met in the court of chancery with the legal doctrine
that silence under such wrongs barred my remedy: to which Talfourd's
written opinion might be appended as proof that we stopped under no
discouragement. It is useless to affect that I don't know I have a
morbid susceptibility of exasperation, to which the meanness and badness
of the law in such a matter would be stinging in the last degree. And I
know of nothing that _could_ come, even of a successful action, which
would be worth the mental trouble and disturbance it would cost."[75]

A few notes of besetting temptations during his busiest days at
_Chuzzlewit_, one taken from each of the first four months of the year
when he was working at its masterly closing scenes, will amusingly
exhibit, side by