the fair, and the gracious had taken a delight to tend my
childhood.... But I must not recall these tender and sorrowful memories
twice; their place is further on, and I am now upon another business.
The perfidy of the Britannic Government stood nowhere more openly
confessed than in one particular of our discipline: that we were shaved
twice in the week. To a man who has loved all his life to be fresh
shaven, can a more irritating indignity be devised? Monday and Thursday
were the days. Take the Thursday, and conceive the picture I must
present by Sunday evening! And Saturday, which was almost as bad, was
the great day for visitors.

Those who came to our market were of all qualities, men and women, the
lean and the stout, the plain and the fairly pretty. Sure, if people at
all understood the power of beauty, there would be no prayers addressed
except to Venus; and the mere privilege of beholding a comely woman is
worth paying for. Our visitors, upon the whole, were not much to boast
of; and yet, sitting in a corner and very much ashamed of myself and my
absurd appearance, I have again and again tasted the finest, the rarest,
and the most ethereal pleasures in a glance of an eye that I should
never see again--and never wanted to. The flower of the hedgerow and the
star in heaven satisfy and delight us: how much more the look of that
exquisite being who was created to bear and rear, to madden and rejoice,
mankind!

There was one young lady in particular, about eighteen or nineteen,
tall, of a gallant carriage, and with a profusion of hair in which the
sun found threads of gold. As soon as she came in the courtyard (and she
was a rather frequent visitor) it seemed I was aware of it. She had an
air of angelic candour, yet of a high spirit; she stepped like a Diana,
every movement was noble and free. One day there was a strong east wind;
the banner was straining at the flagstaff; below us the smoke of the
city chimneys blew hither and thither in a thousand crazy variations;
and away out on the Forth we could see the ships lying down to it and
scudding. I was thinking what a vile day it was, when she appeared. Her
hair blew in the wind with changes of colour; her garments moulded her
with the accuracy of sculpture; the ends of her shawl fluttered about
her ear and were caught in again with an inimitable deftness. You have
seen a pool on a gusty day, how it suddenly sparkles and flashes like a
thing alive? So this lady's fa