-party. _He_ may maltreat you at his
pleasure, batter you with his arguments, kick you with inferences, and
knock you down with conclusions, and no help for it all!

"Ah, here comes Francois with the note." I wrote one line in pencil
for answer: "am sensibly touched by your consideration, and will pass
to-morrow here." I signed this with a P., which might mean Prince,
Potts, or Pottinger. My reply despatched, I began to think how I could
improve the opportunity. "I will bring her to book," thought I; "I will
have an explanation." I always loved that sort of thing,--there is
an almost certainty of emotion; now emotion begets tears; tears,
tenderness; tenderness, consolation; and when you reach consolation, you
are, so to say, a tenant in possession; your title may be disputable,
your lease invalid, still you are there, on the property, and it will
take time at least to turn you out. "After all," thought I, "that rude
German has but troubled the water for a moment, the pure well of her
affections will by this time have regained its calm still surface, and I
shall see my image there as before."

My meditations were interrupted, perhaps not unpleasantly. It was the
waiter with my dinner. I am not unsocial--I am eminently the reverse--I
may say, like most men who feel themselves conversationally gifted, I
like company, I see that my gifts have in such gatherings their natural
ascendancy,--and yet, with all this, I have always felt that to dine
splendidly, all alone, was a very grand thing. Mind, I don't say it is
pleasant or jolly or social, but simply that it is grand to see all that
table equipage of crystal and silver spread out for _you_ alone; to know
that the business of that gorgeous candelabrum is to light _you_; that
the two decorous men in black--archdeacons they might be, from the quiet
dignity of their manners--are there to wait upon _you_; that the whole
sacrifice, from the caviare to the cheese, was a hecatomb to _your_
greatness. I repeat, these are all grand and imposing considerations,
and there have been times when I have enjoyed these _Lucullus cum
Lucullo_ festivals more than convivial assemblages. This day was one of
these: I lingered over my dinner in delightful dalliance. I partook of
nearly every dish, but, with a supreme refinement, ate little of any,
as though to imply, "I am accustomed to a very different _cuisine_ from
this; it is not thus that I fare habitually." And yet I was blandly
forgiving,