ou hear? you company of liars, thieves and traitors, called the world,
go and sleep if you can. I _shall_ sleep, because my conscience is clear.
_False accusations!_ Who can help them? They are the act of others. Read
of Job, and Paul, and Joan of Arc. No, no, no, no; I didn't say read 'em
_out_ with those stentorian lungs. I must be allowed a _little_ sleep, a
man that wastes the midnight oil, yet brushes the early dew. Good-night."

He turned round and slept for several hours as he supposed; but in
reality he was silent for just three seconds. "Well," said he, "and is a
gardener a man to be looked down upon by upstarts? When Adam delved and
Eve span, where was then the gentleman? Why, where the spade was. Yet I
went through the Herald's College, and not one of our mushroom
aristocracy ('bloated' I object to; they don't eat half as much as their
footmen) had a spade for a crest. There's nothing ancient west of the
Caspian. Well, all the better. For there's no fool like an old fool. A
spade's a spade for a' that an a' that, an a' that--an a' that--an a'
that. Hallo! Stop that man; he's gone off on his cork leg, of a' that an
a' that--and it is my wish to be quiet. Allow me respectfully to
observe," said he, striking off suddenly into an air of vast politeness,
"that man requires change. I've done a jolly good day's work with the
spade for this old buffer, and now the intellect claims its turn. The
mind retires above the noisy world to its Acropolis, and there discusses
the great problem of the day; the Insular Enigma. To be or not to be,
that is the question, I believe. No it is not. That is fully discussed
elsewhere. Hum! To diffuse--intelligence--from a fixed island--over one
hundred leagues of water.

"It's a stinger. But I can't complain. I had read Lempriere, and Smith
and Bryant, and mythology in general, yet I must go and fall in love with
the Sphinx. Men are so vain. Vanity whispered, She will set you a light
one; why is a cobbler like a king, for instance? She is not in love with
you, ye fool, if you are with her. The harder the riddle the higher the
compliment the Sphinx pays you. That is the way all sensible men look at
it. She is not the Sphinx; she is an angel, and I call her my Lady
Caprice. _Hate her for being Caprice!_ You incorrigible muddle-head. Why,
I love Caprice for being her shadow. Poor, impotent love that can't solve
a problem. The only one she ever set me. I've gone about it like a fool.
What i