can escape from the rest except by imprisoning
himself in a cell in which he can hardly turn. All food, all exercise,
is taken in company. Ceremony is to a great extent banished. It is every
day in the power of a mischievous person to inflict innumerable
annoyances; it is every day in the power of an amiable person to confer
little services. It not seldom happens that serious distress and danger
call forth in genuine beauty and deformity heroic virtues and abject
vices which, in the ordinary intercourse of good society, might remain
during many years unknown even to intimate associates. Under such
circumstances met Warren Hastings and the Baroness Imhoff, two persons
whose accomplishments would have attracted notice in any court of
Europe. The gentleman had no domestic ties. The lady was tied to a
husband for whom she had no regard, and who had no regard for his own
honor. An attachment sprang up, which was soon strengthened by events
such as could hardly have occurred on land. Hastings fell ill. The
baroness nursed him with womanly tenderness, gave him his medicines with
her own hand, and even sat up in his cabin while he slept. Long before
the Duke of Grafton reached Madras, Hastings was in love. But his love
was of a most characteristic description. Like his hatred, like his
ambition, like all his passions, it was strong, but not impetuous. It
was calm, deep, earnest, patient of delay, unconquerable by time. Imhoff
was called into council by his wife and his wife's lover. It was
arranged that the baroness should institute a suit for a divorce in the
courts of Franconia, that the baron should afford every facility to the
proceeding, and that, during the years which might elapse before the
sentence should be pronounced, they should continue to live together. It
was also agreed that Hastings should bestow some very substantial marks
of gratitude on the complaisant husband, and should, when the marriage
was dissolved, make the lady his wife, and adopt the children whom she
had already borne to Imhoff.

At Madras, Hastings found the trade of the Company in a very
disorganized state. His own tastes would have led him rather to
political than to commercial pursuits; but he knew that the favor of his
employers depended chiefly on their dividends, and that their dividends
depended chiefly on the investment. He therefore, with great judgment,
determined to apply his vigorous mind for a time to this department of
business, whic