"Not at all, for the chance I never had; all I have lost is my desire—no more."
"No, not only your desire," said the voice to me within, "but the fulfilment of it." And when that reply came I naturally turned, as all men do on hearing such interior replies, to a general consideration of regret, and was prepared, if any honest publisher should have come whistling through that wood, with an offer proper to the occasion to produce no less than five volumes on the Nature of Regret, its mortal sting, its bitter-sweetness, its power to keep alive in man the pure passions of the soul, its hint at immortality, its memory of Heaven.
But the wood was empty. The offer did not come. The moment was lost. The five volumes will hardly now be written. In place of them I offer poor this, which you may take or leave. But I beg leave, before I end, to cite certain words very nobly attached to that great inn, The Griffin, which has its foundation set far off in another place, in the town of March, in the sad Fen-Land near the Eastern Sea:
"England my desire, what have you not refused?"
XXIX A CONVERSATION IN ANDORRA
The other day—indeed some months ago—I was in the company of two men who were talking together and were at cross-purposes. The one was an Englishman acquainted with the Catalonian tongue and rather proud of knowing it; the other was a citizen of the Republic of Andorra.
The first had the advantage of his fellow in world-wide travel, the reading of many newspapers and (beside his thorough knowledge of Catalonian) a smattering of French, German, and American.
I was touched to see the care and deference and good-fellowship which the superior extended to the inferior in this colloquy.