s, and led me away even before I had recovered from the
surprise the whole proceeding occasioned me.

Whether it was that I enjoyed the prerogative of a State prisoner, or
that the authorities were not quite clear that they were justified in
what they were doing, I cannot say; but my prison discipline was of the
very mildest order. I had a most comfortable room, with a window looking
seaward over the beautiful bay of Malaga, taking a wide range along
shore, where gardens and villas and orange-groves extended for miles.
The furniture was neat, and with some pretensions to luxury; and the
fare, I am bound to own, was excellent. Books, and even newspapers, were
freely supplied to me, and, save that at certain intervals the clank of
a musket, and the shuffling of feet in the corridor without, told that
the sentry of my guard was being relieved, I could have fancied myself
in some homely inn, without a restriction upon my liberty. My handcuffs
had been removed the moment I had entered my chamber, and now the iron
stanchions of my window were the only reminders of a jail around me.

CHAPTER XXX. CONSOLATIONS OF DIPLOMACY

The first revulsion of feeling over, the terrible shock of that fall
from the pinnacle of wealth and greatness to the lowly condition of a
prisoner unfriended and destitute,--I actually began to enjoy my life,
and feel something wonderfully like happiness. I do not pretend to
say that my disappointment was not most acute and painful, or that I
suffered little from the contemplation of my ruined hopes. No, far from
it; but my grief, like the course of a mountain torrent, soon ran off,
and left the stream of my life clear and untroubled as ever. It is true,
thought I, this is a terrible contrast to what I was a week ago; but
still, is it not a long way in advance of what my original condition
promised? I am a prisoner in a Spanish fortress: is not even that
better than a peasant in an Irish hovel? The very cares with which I am
surrounded bespeak a certain consequence pertaining to me; I am one whom
ministers of State think and speak about, whose name is often on their
lips, whose memory haunts them in their half-waking moments. Is not this
something? Is it not a great deal to one whose whole ideal was to avoid
the bypaths of life, and take his course in its very widest and busiest
thoroughfares?

The occupations in which I passed my days greatly contributed to sustain
this pleasant illusion. I was eter