I have not, my lord: but it is not for want of solicitude: I have sent three several messengers: but can hear nothing to my satisfaction.
Nor can you hear any thing from me that will give you any.
I am grieved at my soul, that I cannot. How, my lord, do the marquis and marchioness?
Don't ask. They are extremely unhappy.
I hear that my dear friend, Signor Jeronymo, has undergone—
A dreadful operation, interrupted the general.—He has. Poor Jeronymo! He could not write to you. God preserve my brother! But, chevalier, you did not save half a life, though we thank you for that, when you restored him to our arms.
I had no reason to boast, my lord, of the accident. I never made a merit of it. It was a mere accident, and cost me nothing. The service was greatly over-rated.
Would to God, chevalier, it had been rendered by any other man in the world!
As it has proved, I am sure, my lord, I have reason to join in the wish.
He shewed me his pictures, statues, and cabinet of curiosities, while dinner was preparing; but rather for the ostentation of his magnificence and taste, than to do me pleasure. I even observed an increasing coldness in his behaviour; and his eye was too often cast upon me with a fierceness that shewed resentment; and not with the hospitable frankness that became him to a visitor and guest, who had undertaken a journey of above two hundred miles, principally to attend him, and to shew him the confidence he had in his honour. This, as it was more to his dishonour than mine, I pitied him for. But what most of all disturbed me, was, that I could not obtain from him any particular intelligence relating to the health of one person, whose distresses lay heavy upon my heart.