the war
will go on, that you shall have no share in it, and that the whole power
of England will not be enough to set her hostage free. That is all there
is to say, I think.... Will you have a glass of wine with me?' he added
courteously, waving a hand towards the commander's quarters.

"I assented, for why, thought I, should there be a personal quarrel
between us? We talked on many things for an hour or more, and his
I found the keenest mind that ever I have met. There was in him a
dispassionateness, a breadth, which seemed most strange in a trifler of
the Court, in an exquisite--for such he was. I sometimes think that his
elegance and flippancy were deliberate, lest he should be taking himself
or life too seriously. His intelligence charmed me, held me, and, later,
as we travelled up to Quebec, I found my journey one long feast of
interest. He was never dull, and his cynicism had an admirable grace and
cordiality. A born intriguer, he still was above intrigue, justifying it
on the basis that life was all sport. In logic a leveller, praising the
moles, as he called them, the champion of the peasant, the apologist for
the bourgeois--who always, he said, had civic virtues--he nevertheless
held that what was was best, that it could not be altered, and that it
was all interesting. 'I never repent,' he said to me one day. 'I have
done after my nature, in the sway and impulse of our time, and as the
King has said, After us the deluge. What a pity it is we shall see
neither the flood nor the ark! And so, when all is done, we shall miss
the most interesting thing of all: ourselves dead and the gap and ruin
we leave behind us. By that, from my standpoint,' he would add, 'life is
a failure as a spectacle.'

"Talking in this fashion and in a hundred other ways, we came to Quebec.
And you know in general what happened. I met your honoured father, whose
life I had saved on the Ohio some years before, and he worked for my
comfort in my bondage. You know how exchange after exchange was refused,
and that for near three years I have been here, fretting my soul out,
eager to be fighting in our cause, yet tied hand and foot, wasting time
and losing heart, idle in an enemy's country. As Doltaire said, war was
declared, but not till he had made here in Quebec last efforts to get
those letters. I do not complain so bitterly of these lost years, since
they have brought me the best gift of my life, your love and friendship;
but my enemies he