inspired us.

I came off in public, as I have said, with flying colours; the
sittings of the court of inquiry died away like a tune that no one
listens to; and yet I was unmasked--I, whom my very adversary
defended, as good as confessed, as good as told the nature of the
quarrel, and by so doing prepared for myself in the future a most
anxious, disagreeable adventure. It was the third morning after
the duel, and Goguelat was still in life, when the time came round
for me to give Major Chevenix a lesson. I was fond of this
occupation; not that he paid me much--no more, indeed, than
eighteenpence a month, the customary figure, being a miser in the
grain; but because I liked his breakfasts and (to some extent)
himself. At least, he was a man of education; and of the others
with whom I had any opportunity of speech, those that would not
have held a book upsidedown would have torn the pages out for pipe-
lights. For I must repeat again that our body of prisoners was
exceptional: there was in Edinburgh Castle none of that
educational busyness that distinguished some of the other prisons,
so that men entered them unable to read, and left them fit for high
employments. Chevenix was handsome, and surprisingly young to be a
major: six feet in his stockings, well set up, with regular
features and very clear grey eyes. It was impossible to pick a
fault in him, and yet the sum-total was displeasing. Perhaps he
was too clean; he seemed to bear about with him the smell of soap.
Cleanliness is good, but I cannot bear a man's nails to seem
japanned. And certainly he was too self-possessed and cold. There
was none of the fire of youth, none of the swiftness of the
soldier, in this young officer. His kindness was cold, and cruel
cold; his deliberation exasperating. And perhaps it was from this