ued. "That is what I wished to tell you,
but I preferred to prove it by a case in point. Here was the handsome
young secretary lying under sentence of death, and his case the more
desperate because, as he had been condemned by the States-General, the
King could not pardon him, but he connived at his escape. The secretary
stole away in a fishing-boat with a few crowns in his pocket, and
reached the court of Courland with a letter of introduction from Goertz,
explaining his secretary's adventures and his craze for paper. The Duke
of Courland was a spendthrift; he had a steward and a pretty wife--three
several causes of ruin. He placed the charming young stranger with his
steward.

"If you can imagine that the sometime secretary had been cured of his
depraved taste by a sentence of death, you do not know the grip that a
man's failings have upon him; let a man discover some satisfaction for
himself, and the headsman will not keep him from it.--How is it that the
vice has this power? Is it inherent strength in the vice, or inherent
weakness in human nature? Are there certain tastes that should be
regarded as verging on insanity? For myself, I cannot help laughing at
the moralists who try to expel such diseases by fine phrases.--Well, it
so fell out that the steward refused a demand for money; and the Duke
taking fright at this, called for an audit. Sheer imbecility! Nothing
easier than to make out a balance-sheet; the difficulty never lies
there. The steward gave his secretary all the necessary documents
for compiling a schedule of the civil list of Courland. He had nearly
finished it when, in the dead of night, the unhappy paper-eater
discovered that he was chewing up one of the Duke's discharges for a
considerable sum. He had eaten half the signature! Horror seized upon
him; he fled to the Duchess, flung himself at her feet, told her of his
craze, and implored the aid of his sovereign lady, implored her in the
middle of the night. The handsome young face made such an impression on
the Duchess that she married him as soon as she was left a widow. And
so in the mid-eighteenth century, in a land where the king-at-arms is
king, the goldsmith's son became a prince, and something more. On the
death of Catherine I. he was regent; he ruled the Empress Anne, and
tried to be the Richelieu of Russia. Very well, young man; now know
this--if you are handsomer than Biron, I, simple canon that I am, am
worth more than a Baron Goertz. So