bout to enter into an account of my ascent of Mont
Blanc, when the slide was closed and my listener lost to me.

"Is it possible, Potts," said I, "that she has detected this turn of
yours for the imaginative line, and that she will not encourage it,
even tacitly? Has she said, 'There is a young man of genius, gifted
marvellously with the richest qualities, and yet such is the exuberance
of his fancy that he is positively its slave. Not content to let him
walk the earth like other men, she attaches wings to him and carries him
off into the upper air. I will endeavor, however hard the task, to clip
his feathers and bring him back to the common haunts of men'? Try it,
fair enchantress, try it!"

The rain was now coming down in torrents, and with such swooping gusts
of wind that I was forced to fasten the leather curtain in front of me,
and sit in utter darkness, denied even the passing pleasure of seeing
the drenched postboys bobbing up and down on the wet saddles. I grew
moody and sad. Every Blue Devil of my acquaintance came to pay his visit
to me, and brought a few more of his private friends. I bethought me
that I was hourly travelling away further and further from my home; that
all this long road must surely be retraced one day or other, though not
in a carriage and post, but probably in a one-horse cart, with a mounted
gendarme on either side of it, and a string to my two wrists in their
bridle hands. I thought of that vulgar herd of mankind so ready to weep
over a romance, and yet send the man who acts one to a penal
settlement. I thought how I should be described as the artful knave,
the accomplished swindler. As if I was the first man who ever took an
exaggerated estimate of his own merits! Go into the House of Commons,
visit the National Gallery, dine at a bar or a military mess, frequent,
in one word, any of the haunts of men, and with what _pieces pour servir
a l'histoire_ of self-deception will you come back loaded!

The sliding window at my back was again drawn aside, and I heard Miss
Herbert's voice,--

"If I am not giving you too much trouble, sir, would you kindly see if I
have not dropped a bracelet--a small jet bracelet--in the _coupe?_"

"I 'm in the dark here, but I'll do my best to find it."

"We are very nearly so, too," said she; "and Mrs. Keats is fast asleep,
quite unmindful of the thunder."

With some struggling I managed to get down on my knees, and was soon
engaged in a very vigorous sea