Towards evening, General Butzou fell asleep. Thaddeus, leaning back in his chair, fixed his eyes on the fire, and mused with amazement and sorrow on what had been told him. When it was almost dark, and he was yet lost in reflection, Mrs. Robson gently opened the door and presented a letter. "Here, sir," said she, "is a letter which a servant has just left; he told me it required no answer."
Thaddeus sprang from his seat at sight of the paper, and almost catching it from her, his former gloomy cogitations dispersed before the hopes and fond emotions of friendship which now lit up in his bosom. Mrs. Robson withdrew. He looked at the superscription—it was the handwriting of his friend. Tearing it asunder, two folded papers presented themselves. He opened them, and they were his own letters, returned without a word. His beating heart was suddenly checked. Letting the papers fall from his hand, he dropped back on his seat and closed his eyes, as if he would shut them from the world and its ingratitude.
Unable to recover from his astonishment, his thoughts whirled about in a succession of accusations, surmises and doubts, which seemed for a few minutes to drive him to distraction.
"Was it really the hand of Somerset?"
Again he examined the envelope. It was; and the enclosures were his own letters, without one word of apology for such incomprehensible conduct.
"Could he make one? No," replied Thaddeus to himself. "Unhappy that I am, to have been induced to apply twice to so despicable a man! Oh, Somerset," cried he, looking at the papers as they lay before him; "was it necessary that insult should be added to unfaithfulness and ingratitude, to throw me off entirely? Good heavens! did he think because I wrote twice, I would persecute him with applications? I have been told this of mankind; but, that I should find it in him?"
In this way, agitated and muttering, and walking up and down the room, he spent another wakeful and cheerless night.
When he went down stairs next morning, to beg Mrs. Robson to attend his friend until his return, she mentioned how uneasy she was at having heard him most of the preceding night moving above her head. He was trying to account to her for his restlessness, by complaining of a headache, but she interrupted him by saying, "O no, sir; I am sure it is the hard boards you lie on, to accommodate the poor old gentleman. I am certain you will make yourself ill."
Thaddeus thanked her for her solicitude; but declaring that all beds hard, or soft, were alike to him, he left her more reconciled to his pallet on the floor. And with his drawings in his pocket, once more took the path to Great Newport Street.
Resentment against his fickle friend, and anxiety for the tranquillity of General Butzou, whose age, infirmities and sufferings threatened a speedy termination of his life, determined the count to sacrifice all false delicacy and morbid feelings, and to hazard another attempt at acquiring the means of affording those comforts to the sick veteran which his condition demanded. Happen how it would, he resolved that Butzou should never know the complete wreck of his property. I shuddered at loading him with the additional distress of thinking he was a burden on his protector.