d the buoyant step of strength and
confidence.

But the Captain was an alchemist, and the dross of outer events turned
to gold in the marvellous crucible of his mind. Fortune should have
known this and abandoned the vain attempt to torment him. He had
failed, but no other man could have come so near success. He was
alone, therefore free: poor, therefore independent; desirous of hiding,
therefore of importance: in a foreign land, therefore well placed for
novel and pleasing accidents. The rain was a drop and the wind a puff:
if he were wet, it would be delightful to get dry; since he was hungry,
no inn could be too humble and no fare too rough. Fortune should
indeed have set him on high, and turned her wasted malice on folk more
penetrable by its stings.

The Captain whistled and sang. What a fright he had given the
Ministers, how nearly he had brought back the Prince, what an uncommon
and intimate satisfaction of soul came from carrying, under his wet
coat, lists of names, letters, and what not--all capable of causing
tremors in high quarters, and of revealing in spheres of activity
hitherto unsuspected gentlemen--aye, and ladies--of the loftiest
position; all of whom (the Captain was piling up his causes of
self-congratulation) owed their present safety, and directed their
present anxieties, to him, Jean Dieppe, and to nobody else in the
world. He broke off his whistling to observe aloud:

"Mark this, it is to very few that there comes a life so interesting as
mine"; and his tune began again with an almost rollicking vigour.

What he said was perhaps true enough, if interest consists (as many
hold) in uncertainty; in his case uncertainty both of life and of all
that life gives, except that one best thing which he had
pursued--activity. Of fame he had gained little, peace he had never
tasted; of wealth he had never thought, of love--ah, of love now? His
smile and the roguish shake of his head and pull at his long black
moustache betrayed no dissatisfaction on that score. And as a fact (a
thing which must at the very beginning be distinguished from an
impression of the Captain's), people were in the habit of loving him:
he never expected exactly this, although he had much self-confidence.
Admiration was what he readily enough conceived himself to inspire;
love was a greater thing. On the whole, a fine life--why, yes, a very
fine life indeed; and plenty of it left, for he was but thirty-nine.

"It really