in despair, under what protest can I also escape
from England and my own intemperate mind? It seemed a miraculous
answer:--There lay at my chambers a note written by Count Kesensky; I
went to the embassy, and heard of an Austrian ship of war being at one
of our ports upon an expedition to the East, and was introduced to
the captain, a gentlemanly fellow, like most of the officers of his
Government. Finding in me a German scholar, and a joyful willingness, he
engaged me to take the post of secretary to the expedition in the
place of an invalided Freiherr von Redwitz. The bargain was struck
immediately: I was to be ready to report myself to the captain on
board not later than the following day. Count Kesensky led me aside:
he regretted that he could do nothing better for me: but I thought his
friendliness extreme and astonishing, and said so; whereupon the count
assured me that his intentions were good, though he had not been of
great use hitherto--an allusion to the borough of Chippenden he had only
heard of von Redwitz's illness that afternoon. I thanked him cordially,
saying I was much in his debt, and he bowed me out, letting me fancy, as
my father had fancied before me, and as though I had never observed
and reflected in my life, that the opportuneness of this intervention
signified a special action of Providence.

The flattery of the thought served for an elixir. But with whom would my
father abide during my absence? Captain Bulsted and Julia saved me from
a fit of remorse; they had come up to town on purpose to carry him home
with them, and had left a message on my table, and an invitation to
dinner at their hotel, where the name of Janet was the Marino Faliero of
our review of Riversley people and old times. The captain and his wife
were indignant at her conduct. Since, however, I chose to excuse it,
they said they would say nothing more about her, and she was turned face
to the wall. I told them how Janet had taken him for months. 'But I
'll take him for years,' said Julia. 'The truth is, Harry, my old dear!
William and I are never so united--for I'm ashamed to quarrel with
him--as when your father's at Bulsted. He belongs to us, and other
people shall know you 're not obliged to depend on your family for help,
and your aunt Dorothy can come and see him whenever she likes.'

That was settled. Captain Bulsted went with me to Lady Sampleman's
to prepare my father for the change of nurse and residence. We were
inf