already have seen his error, and solicited your return?"

"Return!" cried Bolingbroke, and his eyes flashed fire,--"return!--Hear
what I said to the Queen-Mother who came to attempt a reconciliation:
'Madam,' said I, in a tone as calm as I could command, 'if ever this
hand draws the sword, or employs the pen, in behalf of that prince, may
it rot!' Return! not if my head were the price of refusal! Yet,
Devereux,"--and here Bolingbroke's voice and manner changed,--"yet it is
not at these tricks of fate that a wise man will repine. We do right to
cultivate honours; they are sources of gratification to ourselves: they
are more; they are incentives to the conduct which works benefits to
others; but we do wrong to afflict ourselves at their loss. 'Nec
quaerere nec spernere honores oportet.'* It is good to enjoy the
blessings of fortune: it is better to submit without a pang to their
loss. You remember, when you left me, I was preparing myself for this
stroke: believe me, I am now prepared."


* "It becomes us neither to court nor to despise honours."


And in truth Bolingbroke bore the ingratitude of the Chevalier well.
Soon afterwards he carried his long cherished wishes for retirement into
effect; and Fate, who delights in reversing her disk, leaving in
darkness what she had just illumined, and illumining what she had
hitherto left in obscurity and gloom, for a long interval separated us
from each other, no less by his seclusion than by the publicity to which
she condemned myself.

Lord Bolingbroke's dismissal was not the only event affecting me that