it inevitably followed
that it must be bad. What I could neither do as the descendant of St.
Louis, or the son of Peter Potts, must needs be wrong. These were the
grievous meditations of that long, long night; and though I arose from
the hard table, weary and with aching bones, I blessed the pinkish-gray
light that ushered in the day. I had scarcely completed a very rapid
toilet, when Francois came with a message from Mrs. Keats, "hoping I
had rested well, and begging to know at what hour it was my pleasure to
continue the journey." There was an evident astonishment in the fellow's
face at the embassy with which he was charged; and though he delivered
the message with reasonable propriety, there was a certain something in
his look that said, "What delusion is this you have thrown around the
old lady?"

"Say that I am ready, Francois; that I am even impatient to be off, and
the sooner we start the better."

This I uttered with all my heart; for I was eager to get away before
the odious German should be stirring, and could not subdue my anxiety to
avoid meeting him again. There was every reason to expect that we should
get off unnoticed, and I hastened out myself to order the horses and
stimulate the postilions to greater activity. This was no labor of
love, I promise you! The sluggardly inertness of that people passes all
belief; entreaties, objurgations, curses, even bribes could not move
them. They never admitted such a possibility as haste, and stumped about
in their wooden shoes or iron-bound boots, searching for articles of
horse-gear under bundles of hay or stacks of firewood, as though it
was the very first time in their lives that post-horses had ever been
required in that locality. "Make a great people out of such materials
as these!" muttered I; "what rubbish to imagine it! How, with such
intolerable apathy, are they to be moved? Where everything proceeds at
the same regulated slowness, how can justice ever overtake crime? When
can truth come up with falsehood? Whichever starts first here, must
inevitably win." To urge the creatures on by example, I assisted with my
own hands to put on the harness; not, I will own, with much advantage
to speed, for I put the collar on upside down, and, in revenge for the
indignity, the beast planted one of his feet upon me, and almost
drove the cock of his shoe through my instep. Almost mad with pain
and passion, I limped away into the garden, and sat down in a damp
summer-h