uld lose the best part of my happiness if there was nothing
I could console him for."

"Believe me," said I, "I have known Bolingbroke in the zenith of his
success; but never knew him so worthy of congratulation as now!"

"Is that flattery to him or to me?" said Lady Bolingbroke, smiling
archly, for her smiles were quick successors to her tears.

"_Detur digniori_!" answered I; "but you must allow that, though it is
a fine thing to have all that the world can give, it is still better to
gain something that the world cannot take away?"

"Are you also a philosopher?" cried Lady Bolingbroke, gayly. "Ah, poor
me! In my youth, my portion was the cloister;* in my later years I am
banished to _the porch_! You have no conception, Monsieur Devereux, what
wise faces and profound maxims we have here, especially as all who come
to visit my lord think it necessary to quote Tully, and talk of solitude
as if it were a heaven! _Les pauvres bons gens_! they seem a little
surprised when Henry receives them smilingly, begs them to construe the
Latin, gives them good wine, and sends them back to London with faces
half the length they were on their arrival. _Mais voici, Monsieur, le
fermier philosophe!_"

* She was brought up at St. Cyr.--ED.

And Bolingbroke entering, I took my leave of this lively and interesting
lady and entered his carriage.

As soon as we were seated, he pressed me for my reasons for refusing to
prolong my visit. As I thought they would be more opportune after the
excursion of the day was over, and as, in truth, I was not eager to
relate them, I begged to defer the narration till our return to his
house at night, and then I directed the conversation into a new channel.

"My chief companion," said Bolingbroke, after describing to me his
course of life, "is the man you are about to visit. He has his
frailties and infirmities,--and in saying that, I only imply that he
is human,--but he is wise, reflective, generous, and affectionate; add
these qualities to a dazzling wit, and a genius deep, if not sublime,
and what wonder that we forget something of vanity and something of
fretfulness,--effects rather of the frame than of the mind. The wonder
only is that, with a body the victim to every disease, crippled and
imbecile from the cradle, his frailties should not be more numerous,
and his care, his thoughts, and attentions not wholly limited to his
own complaints. For the sickly are almost of necessity selfish; an