“Why—I don’t know,” cried he, looking half alarmed.
“Oh! I give you warning, if you come you must expect them; so my invitation is almost as pleasant as the man’s in ‘Measure for Measure,’ who calls to Master Barnardine, ‘Won’t you come down to be hanged?’”
“But how,” cried he, “have I incurred your upbraidings?”
“By bringing me here,” I answered, “only to disappoint me.”
“Did I bring you here?”
“Yes, by telling me you were to speak to-day.”
He protested he could never have made such an assertion. I explained myself, reminding him he had told me he was certainly to speak before the recess; and that, therefore, when I was informed this was to be the last day of trial till after the recess, I concluded I should be right, but found myself so utterly wrong as to hear nothing but such evidence as I Could not even understand, because it was so uninteresting I could not even listen to it.
“How strangely,” he exclaimed, “are we all moulded, that nothing ever in this mortal life, however pleasant in itself, and however desirable from its circumstances, can come to us without alloy—not even flattery; for here, at this moment, all the high gratification I should feel, and I am well disposed to feel it thoroughly in supposing you could think it worth your while to come hither in order to hear me, is kept down and subdued by the consciousness how much I must disappoint you.”
“Not at all,” cried I; “the worse you speak, the better for my side of the question.”
He laughed, but confessed the agitation of his spirits was so great in the thought of that speech, whenever he was to make it, that it haunted him in fiery dreams in his sleep.