"It is a lovely morning, Mr Walpole—we have half an hour to spare—give me your arm!"
Perfectly puzzled and confounded by the collected manner of the baron, I placed my arm mechanically in his, and suffered him to conduct me whethersoever he would. We walked in silence for some distance, passed into the meanest quarter of the city, and reached a miserable and squalid street. The baron pointed to the most wretched house in the lane, and bade me direct my eye especially to its sixth story.
"Mark it well," said he, "you see a window there to which a line is fixed with recently washed linen?"
"I do," I answered.
"In the room—the small close hole to which that window hardly brings air and light, I passed months of my life. The mass at which you have three times watched me, is connected with it, and with occurrences that had their rise there. I was the occupant of that garret—it seems but yesterday since I wanted bread there."
The surgeon was unmanned. He kept his eye upon the melancholy window until emotion blinded it, and permitted him to see no longer. He stood transfixed for a second or two, and then spoke quickly.
"Mr Walpole, poverty is horrible! I have courage for any extremity but that. Pain I have borne—shrieks and moans I have listened to unmoved, whilst I stood by labouring to remove them; but when I recall the moments in which I have languished for a crust of bread, and known mankind to be my enemy—as though, being poor, I was a felon—all hearts steeled against me—All hearts, did I say?" added the speaker suddenly checking himself—"I lie; had it been so, I should not have been here to tell the tale."
The baron paused, and then resumed.
"High as the rank is, Mr Walpole, to which I have attained; brilliant as my career has been, and I acknowledge my success with gratitude—believe me, there is not a famished wretch who crawls through the sinks of this overgrown metropolis, that suffers more than I have suffered, has bitterer hours than I have undergone. In this city of splendour and corruption, at whose extremes are experienced the most exquisite enjoyment and the most crushing and bitter endurance, I have passed through trials which have before now overborne and killed the stoutest hearts, and would have annihilated mine, but for the unselfish love of him whose business took me to the church this day. Misery, in all its aggravated forms, has been mine. Want of money—of necessary clothing—hunger—thirst; such things have been familiar to me. In that room, and in the depth of the hard winter, I have for hours given warmth to my benumbed fingers with the breath which absolute want enabled me to draw only with difficulty and pain."
"Is it possible!" I involuntarily exclaimed.