had a run of constant bad luck; and, being
always of a grand convivial turn, treating Everybody, he got deep in
Drink, against all his Promises to me, and altogether so lawless, that I
brought things to a pass between us. 'He should go on with me if he
would take the Tee-total Pledge for one year'--'No--he had broken his
word,' he said, 'and he would not pledge it again,' much as he wished to
go on with me. That, you see, was very fine in him; he is altogether
fine--A Great Man, I maintain it: like one of Carlyle's old Norway Kings,
with a wider morality than we use; which is very good and fine (as this
Captain said to me) 'for you who are born with a silver spoon in your
mouths.' I did not forget what Carlyle too says about Great Faults in
Great Men: even in David, the Lord's Anointed. But I thought best to
share the Property with him and let him go his way. He had always
resented being under any Control, and was very glad to be his own sole
Master again: and yet clung to me in a wild and pathetic way. He has not
been doing better since: and I fear is sinking into disorder.

This is a long story about one you know nothing about except what little
I have told you. But the Man is a very remarkable Man indeed, and you
may be interested--you must be--in him.

'Ho! parlons d'autres choses, ma Fille,' as my dear Sevigne says. She
now occupies Montaigne's place in my room: well--worthily: she herself a
Lover of Montaigne, and with a spice of his free thought and speech in
her. I am sometimes vext I never made her acquaintance till last year:
but perhaps it was as well to have such an acquaintance reserved for
one's latter years. The fine Creature! much more alive to me than most
Friends--I _should_ like to see her 'Rochers' in Brittany. {105}

'Parlons d'autres choses'--your Mother's Miniature. You seemed at first
to think it was taken from the Engraving: but the reverse was always
clear to me. The whole figure, down to the Feet, is wanted to account
for the position of the Legs; and the superior delicacy of Feature would
not be gained _from_ the Engraving, but the contrary. The Stars were
stuck in to make an 'Urania' of it perhaps. I do not assert that your
Miniature is the original: but that such a Miniature is. I did not
expect that Black next the Picture would do: had you 'tried on the
Bonnet' first, as I advised? I now wish I had sent the Picture over in
its original Frame, which I had doctored quite we