clown. Your humorous rogue is not half so taking. Con would be the
porpoise in a fish tank there, inscrutably busy on his errand and watched
for his tumblings. Better I than he; and I should make a worse of it--at
least for myself.'

'Wouldn't the secret of his happiness interfere?'

'If he has the secret inside his common sense. The bulk of it I suspect
to be, that he enjoys his luxuries and is ashamed of his laziness; and so
the secret pulls both ways. One day a fit of pride may have him, or one
of his warm impulses, and if he's taken in the tide of it, I shall grieve
for the secret.'

'You like his wife, Philip?'

'I respect her. They came together,--I suppose, because they were near
together, like the two islands, in spite of the rolling waves between.
I would not willingly see the union disturbed. He warms her, and she
houses him. And he has to control the hot blood that does the warming,
and she to moderate the severity of her principles, which are an
essential part of the housing. Oh! shiver politics, Patrice. I wish
I had been bred in France: a couple of years with your Pere Clement, and
I could have met Irishmen and felt to them as an Irishman, whether they
were disaffected or not. I wish I did. When I landed the other day,
I thought myself passably cured, and could have said that rhetoric is the
fire-water of our country, and claptrap the springboard to send us diving
into it. I like my comrades-in-arms, I like the character of British
officers, and the men too--I get on well with them. I declare to you,
Patrice, I burn to live in brotherhood with them, not a rift of division
at heart! I never show them that there is one. But our early training