en I tell you that I have never repented it."

Greatly surprised, and even startled, I heard my host make this strange
avowal. "Forgive me," said I, "but you have powerfully excited my
interest; dare I inquire from whose experience I am now deriving a
lesson?"

"Not yet," said my host, smiling, "not till our conversation is over,
and you have bid the old anchorite adieu, in all probability forever:
you will then know that you have conversed with a man, perhaps more
universally neglected and contemned than any of his contemporaries.
Yes," he continued, "yes, I resigned power, and I got no praise for my
moderation, but contempt for my folly; no human being would believe
that I could have relinquished that treasure through a disregard for
its possession which others would only have relinquished through an
incapacity to retain it; and that which, had they seen it recorded in
an ancient history, men would have regarded as the height of philosophy,
they despised when acted under their eyes, as the extremest abasement of
imbecility. Yet I compare my lot with that of the great man whom I
was expected to equal in ambition, and to whose grandeur I might have
succeeded; and am convinced that in this retreat I am more to be envied
than he in the plenitude of his power and the height of his renown; yet
is not happiness the aim of wisdom? if my choice is happier than his, is
it not wiser?"

"Alas," thought I, "the wisest men seldom have the loftiest genius,
and perhaps happiness is granted rather to mediocrity of mind than to
mediocrity of circumstance;" but I did not give so uncourteous a reply
to my host an audible utterance; on the contrary, "I do not doubt," said
I, as I rose to depart, "the wisdom of a choice which has brought you
self-gratulation. And it has been said by a man both great and good, a
man to whose mind was open the lore of the closet and the experience of
courts that, in wisdom or in folly, 'the only difference between one man
and another, is whether a man governs his passions or his passions him.'
According to this rule, which indeed is a classic and a golden aphorism,
Alexander, on the throne of Persia, might have been an idiot to Diogenes
in his tub. And now, Sir, in wishing you farewell, let me again crave
your indulgence to my curiosity."

"Not yet, not yet," answered my host; and he led me once more into
the other room. While they were preparing my horse, we renewed our
conversation. To the best of my r