under an angry
moon; and each day the same until we touched the edge of a southern
circle and saw light, and I could use my brain.

The matter most present to me was my injustice regarding my poor
father's speech in the City hall. He had caused me to suffer so much
that I generally felt for myself when he appealed for sympathy, or
provoked some pity: but I was past suffering, and letting kindly
recollection divest the speech of its verbiage, I took it to my heart.
It was true that he had in his blind way struck the keynote of his
position, much as I myself had conceived it before. Harsh trials had
made me think of my own fortunes more than of his. This I felt, and I
thought there never had been so moving a speech. It seemed to make the
world in debt to us. What else is so consolatory to a ruined man?

In reality the busy little creature within me, whom we call self, was
digging pits for comfort to flow in, of any kind, in any form; and it
seized on every idea, every circumstance, to turn it to that purpose,
and with such success, that when by-and-by I learnt how entirely
inactive special Providence had been in my affairs, I had to collect
myself before I could muster the conception of gratitude toward the
noble woman who clothed me in the illusion. It was to the Princess
Ottilia, acting through Count Kesensky, that I owed both my wafting
away from England at a wretched season, and that chance of a career in
Parliament! The captain of the Verona hinted as much when, after a
year of voyaging, we touched at an East Indian seaport, and von Redwitz
joined the vessel to resume the post I was occupying. Von Redwitz (the
son of Prince Ernest's Chancellor, I discovered) could have told me more
than he did, but he handed me a letter from the princess, calling
me home urgently, and even prescribing my route, and bidding me come
straight to Germany and to Sarkeld. The summons was distasteful, for I
had settled into harness under my scientific superiors, and had proved
to my messmates that I was neither morose nor over-conceited. Captain
Martinitz persuaded me to return, and besides, there lay between the
lines of Ottilia's letter a signification of welcome things better
guessed at than known. Was I not bound to do her bidding? Others had
done it: young von Redwitz, for instance, in obeying the telegraph wires
and feigning sickness to surrender his place to me, when she wished to
save me from misery by hurrying me to new scenes wi