fellow, scarcely to be endured. If I assume my most cheerful expression,
my smiles arouse his contempt and disgust. As well attempt to act a comic
part in the mask of tragedy! And what is the end of it all? My present
life has been another's: do I look to have a new life which shall be my
own?'

Your soliloquy is interrupted by the bell. The old routine awaits you:
you must trudge, and you must stand; and first anoint your limbs, if you
would hold out to the end. Dinner will be the same as ever, and go on as
late as ever. The change from all your former habits, the wakeful night,
the violent exercise, the exhaustion, are slowly undermining your health
at this moment, and preparing you for consumption or colic, for asthma or
the delights of gout. However, you hold out in spite of all, though many
a time your right place would be in bed. But that would never do: that
looks like shamming, like shirking your work. The result is that you grow
as pallid as a man at the point of death.

So much for your city life. And now for an excursion into the country.
I will content myself with a single detail. As likely as not it is a wet
day. Your turn for the carriage (as might be expected) comes last. You
wait and wait, till at last its return is out of the question, and you
are squeezed into some vehicle with the cook, or with my lady's _friseur_,
without even a proper allowance of straw. I shall make no scruple of
relating to you an experience of Thesmopolis the Stoic, which I had from
his own mouth; a most amusing incident, and just the sort of thing one
might expect to find happening again. He was in the service of a certain
wealthy and luxurious lady of quality, whom on one occasion he had to
accompany on a journey from Rome. The fun began at once. The philosopher
received as his travelling companion a beardless exquisite of the
pitch-plastering persuasion, by whom, you may be certain, my lady set