CHAPTER LX. DISCLOSURES

I have more than once heard physicians remark the singular immunity a
fool's skull seems to possess from the evil effects of injury--as if
Nature, when denying a governing faculty, had, in kind compensation,
imparted a triple thickness to the head thus exposed. It is well known
how among the educated and thinking classes many maladies are fatal
which are comparatively innocuous among those whose hands alone are
called on to labour. A very ingenious theory might be spun from this
fact, to the manifest self-gratulation of foxhunters, sailors, gentlemen
who assault the new police, tithe-proctors, and others. For the present
I have no further use for the remark than as it bore upon the head-piece
of Lord Dudley de Vere, whose admirable developments had received little
or no damage from the rude assault of his companion. When he awoke the
next morning, he was only aware that something unusual had occurred;
and gradually by 'trying back' in his sensations, he remembered every
particle that took place--had the clearest recollection of the 'run upon
red'; knew the number of bottles of champagne he had partaken of; and
was only puzzled by one thing--what could possibly have suggested the
courage with which he confronted Burke, and the hardihood that led to
insulting him. As to any awkwardness at being brought home to the house
of the person he had himself so ill-treated, he never felt anything
approaching to it; the extent of his reasoning on this point only went
to his satisfaction that 'some one' took care of him, and that he was
not left to lie on the floor of the salon.

This admirable philosophy of De Vere served in a great measure to
relieve me from the constraint I felt in presenting myself before him,
and soon put me perfectly at my ease in our interview. After learning,
that, except some headaching sensations, the only inconvenience he
experienced was an unconquerable thirst, I touched lightly on the cause
of his misfortune; when, what was my astonishment to discern that he not
only did not entertain a particle of ill-will towards the man who had
so brutally ill-treated him, but actually grew warm in his panegyric
of Burkes consummate skill and address at play--such qualities in his
estimation being well worthy to cover any small blemishes of villainy
his character might suffer under.

'I say, don't you think Burke a devilish sharp fellow? He's up to
everything, and so cool, so confounde