I cannot promise more to myself; but from that instant your fortune, if I
augur aught aright from your ability, will be in your own hands. You
shake your head--surely you must see, that there is not a difference
between two vehemently opposite parties to be reconciled--aut numen aut
Nebuchadrezar. There is but a verbal disagreement between us, and we must
own the wisdom of the sentence recorded in Aulus Gellius, that 'he is but
a madman, who splits the weight of things upon the hair-breadths of
words.' You laugh at the quaintness of the quotation; quaint proverbs are
often the truest."

If my reader should think lightly of me, when I own that I felt wavering
and irresolute at the end of this speech, let him for a moment place
himself in my situation--let him feel indignant at the treachery, the
injustice, the ingratitude of one man; and, at the very height of his
resentment, let him be soothed, flattered, courted, by the offered
friendship and favour of another. Let him personally despise the former,
and esteem the latter; and let him, above all, be convinced as well as
persuaded of the truth of Vincent's remark, viz. that no sacrifice of
principle, nor of measures, was required--nothing but an alliance against
men, not measures. And who were those men? bound to me by a single tie--
meriting from my gratitude a single consideration? No! the men, above all
others, who had offered me the greatest affront, and deserved from me the
smallest esteem.

But, however human feelings might induce me to waver, I felt that it was
not by them only I was to decide. I am not a man whose vices or virtues
are regulated by the impulse and passion of the moment; if I am quick to
act, I am habitually slow to deliberate. I turned to Vincent, and pressed
his hand: "I dare not trust myself to answer you now," said I: "give me
till to-morrow; I shall then have both considered and determined."