pposed that this woman, who so cordially detested me, spent her
whole time in going down on her knees and making earnest supplications
to the throne on my behalf. But what signified the representations of
the _Gazette_ if I knew them to be false? Aye, but I did not know that
they were false. It is true that my obligations to her were quite
aerial, and might, as the reader will think, have been supported without
any preternatural effort. But exactly these aerial burdens, whether of
gratitude or of honour, most oppressed me as being least tangible and
incapable of pecuniary or other satisfaction. No sinking fund could meet
them. And even the dull unimaginative woman herself, eternally held up
to admiration as my resolute benefactress, got the habit (I am sure) of
looking upon me as under nameless obligations to her. This raised my
wrath. It was not that to my feelings the obligations were really a mere
figment of pretence. On the contrary, according to my pains endured,
they towered up to the clouds. But I felt that nobody had any right to
load me with favours that I had never asked for, and without leave even
asked from me; and the more real were the favours, the deeper the wrong
done to me. I sought, therefore, for some means of retaliation. And it
is odd that it was not till thirty years after that I perceived one. It
then struck me that the eternal intercession might have been equally
odious to her. To find herself prostrate for ever, weeping like Niobe,
and, if the _Gazette_ was to be believed, refusing to raise herself from
the mud or the flinty pavement till I had been forgiven, and reinstated
in my rank--ah, how loathsome that must have been to her! Ah, how
loathsome the whole cycle of favours were to me, considering from whom
they came! Then we had effectually plagued each other. And it was not
without loud laughter, as of malice unexpectedly triumphant, that I
found one night thirty years after, on regretting my powerlessness of
vengeance, that, in fact, I had amply triumphed thirty years before. So,
undaunted Mrs. Evans, if you live anywhere within call, listen to the
assurance that all accounts are squared between us, and that we balanced
our mutual debts by mutual disgust; and that, if you plagued me
perversely, I plagued you unconsciously.

And though shot and bullets were forbidden fruit, yet something might be
done with hard wadding. A good deal of classical literature disappeared
in this way, which by one