"I do; he is at hand; send in search of him! I have seen him. Once more
I have seen Castruccio Cesarini!"

BOOK IX.

"Woe, woe: all things are clear."--SOPHOCLES: Oed. Tyr. 754.

CHAPTER I.

THE privilege that statesmen ever claim,
Who private interest never yet pursued,
But still pretended 'twas for others' good.
...... From hence on every humorous wind that veered
With shifted sails a several course you steered.
_Absalom and Achitophel_, Part ii.

LORD VARGRAVE had for more than a fortnight remained at the inn at
M-----, too ill to be removed with safety in a season so severe. Even
when at last, by easy stages, he reached London, he was subjected to
a relapse; and his recovery was slow and gradual. Hitherto unused to
sickness, he bore his confinement with extreme impatience; and against
the commands of his physician insisted on continuing to transact
his official business, and consult with his political friends in his
sick-room; for Lumley knew well, that it is most pernicious to public
men to be considered failing in health,--turkeys are not more unfeeling
to a sick brother than politicians to an ailing statesman; they give out
that his head is touched, and see paralysis and epilepsy in every speech
and every despatch. The time, too, nearly ripe for his great schemes,
made it doubly necessary that he should exert himself, and prevent
being shelved with a plausible excuse of tender compassion for his
infirmities. As soon therefore as he learned that Legard had left Paris,
he thought himself safe for a while in that quarter, and surrendered
his thoughts wholly to his ambitious projects. Perhaps, too, with
the susceptible vanity of a middle-aged man, who has had his _bonnes
fortunes_, Lumley deemed, with Rousseau, that a lover, pale and
haggard--just raised from the bed of suffering--is more interesting to
friendship than attractive to love. He and Rousseau were, I believe,
both mistaken; but that is a matter of opinion: they both thought very
coarsely of women,--one from having no sentiment, and the other from
having a sentiment that was but a disease. At length, just as Lumley was
sufficiently recovered to quit his house, to appear at his office, and
declare that his illness had wonderfully improved his constitution,
intelligence from Paris, the more startling from being wholly
unexpected, reached him. From Caroline he learned that Maltravers had
proposed to Evelyn, and