CHAPTER VI

IN SEARCH OF THE PICTURESQUE

I was free, but what was I to do with my freedom? Ingenious apologists
for slavery used to argue that the slave was much happier as a bondman
than a freeman, as long as the conditions of his bondage were not
unendurably harsh: but no one ever knew a slave who held this creed.
There never was a slave who did not prefer his dinner of herbs, earned
by his own labour, to the stalled ox of luxurious captivity. For my
part, I thought the air never tasted so sweet as on that morning of my
liberation. I walked slowly, drawing long breaths, that I might taste
its full relish, as a connoisseur passes an exquisite and rare wine
over his palate, that he may discriminate its subtleties. I became a
lounger, and took the pavement with the air of a gentleman at ease. I
wandered into Hyde Park, paid my penny for a seat, and sat down almost
dizzy with the unaccustomed thought that there was not a human being in
the universe who, at that moment, had the smallest claim to make upon
my time or energy. An hour passed in a kind of ecstatic dream. It
chanced to be a morning when Queen Victoria was driving from Paddington
to Buckingham Palace, and every instant the throng of carriages
increased. Standing on my seat, I saw an immense lane of people,
silent as a wood; a contagious shiver stirred them, like a gust of wind
amongst the leaves; I saw the distant glitter of helmets and cuirasses,
and the pageant swept along with that one tired, kindly, homely face
for its centre of attraction, luring loyalty even from a heart so
republican as mine by its air of patient weariness. I thought, and I
believed the thought sincere, that I would not have exchanged places
with her who was the mistress of so many peoples, the Empress of such