the Schloss,
there was ample material. This was an occupation that amused me vastly,
and I took to it with great zeal, and with such success that old Hirsch,
the jailer, at last consigned the whole to my charge, along with the
task of exhibiting the collection to strangers,--a source from which the
honest veteran derived the better part of his means of life.

At first, I scarcely liked my function as showman, but, like all my
other experiences in life, habit sufficed to reconcile me, and I took to
the occupation as though I had been born to it If now and then some rude
or vulgar traveller would ruffle my temper by some illiterate remark
or stupid question, I was well repaid by intercourse with a different
stamp. They were to me such peeps at the world as a monk might have from
the windows of his cloister, tempting, perhaps, but always blended with
the sense of the security that encompassed him, and defended him from
the cares of existence.

Perhaps the consciousness that I could assert my innocence and procure
my freedom at any moment, for the first few months reconciled me to this
strange life; but certainly, after a while, I ceased to care for any
other existence, and never troubled my head either about past or future.
I had, in fact, arrived at the great monastic elevation, in which a man,
ceasing to be human, reaches the dignity of a vegetable.

I had begun, as I have said, by an act of heroism, in accepting all
the penalties of another, and, long after I ceased to revert to this
sacrifice, the impulse it had once given still continued to move me. If
Hirsch never alluded to my imputed crime to me, I was equally reserved
towards him.

CHAPTER XLIV. A VISIT FROM THE HON. GREY BULLER

From time to time, a couple of grave, judicial-looking men would arrive
and pass the forenoon at the Ambras Schloss, in reading out certain
documents to me. I never paid much attention to them, but my ear at
moments would catch the strangest possible allegations as to my exalted
political opinions, the dangerous associates I was bound up with, and
the secret societies I belonged to. I heard once, too, and by mere
accident, how at Steuben I had asked the jailer to procure me a horse,
and thrown gold in handfuls from the windows of my prison, to bribe the
townsfolk to my rescue, and I laughed to myself to think what a deal of
pleading and proof it would take to rebut all these allegations, and how
little likely it was I would eve