"Wretch! art thou sure of it?"
"It was I who accompanied them to the ship."
"My poor friend," Harris exclaimed, seizing my hands. "Gratitude may be assumed, but love does not come at will."
"Alas!" sighed Dimitri. This sentiment had an echo in his heart.
Since that day, Monsieur, I have lived like the beasts; drank, ate, breathed. I sent my collection to Hamburg without one specimen of the Boryana variabilis. My friends accompanied me to the French steamer the day after the ball. They thought it wise to make the journey during the night, for fear of encountering M. Pericles' soldiers. We arrived without accident at Piraeus; but when a short distance from the shore, a half-dozen invisible muskets sent their bullets singing about our ears. It was the pretty Captain sending his adieux.
I scoured the mountains of Malta, of Sicily, and of Italy, and my herbarium was much richer than I. My father, who had had the good sense to keep his inn, wrote to me, at Messina, that my efforts were appreciated. Perhaps I might find a place on arriving; but I determined to count on nothing.
Harris was en route for Japan. In one or two years I hoped to have news of him. The little Lobster had written me from Rome that he was still exercising with the pistol. Giacomo continued to seal letters all day and crack nuts at night. M. Mérinay found a new interpretation from the inscription on the monument, one more clever than mine. His great work upon Demosthenes ought to be printed some day or other. The King of the Mountains made peace with the authorities. He built a fine mansion on the road to Pentelicus, with a guard-house for lodging twenty-five devoted Palikars. In the meantime, he has rented a small hotel in the modern city, at the edge of the open sewer. He receives many people, and actively engages in public affairs, in order to be elected to the Ministry. Dimitri goes there occasionally, to supper, but sighs in the kitchen.
I have never heard of Mrs. Simons, of Mr. Sharper, nor of Mary-Ann. If this silence continues, I shall soon think of them no more. Sometimes, even in the middle of the night, I dream that I am before her and that my tall, thin figure is reflected in her eyes. Then I awake, I weep hot tears and I furiously bite my pillow. What I regret, believe me, is not the woman, it is the fortune and the position which escaped me. It is a good thing for me that I have not yielded up my heart, and each day I give thanks for my natural coldness. What I might complain of, my dear Monsieur, is, if unfortunately, I had fallen in love!