“Did you feel, for instance, when playing practical jokes on the maids of honor in Dublin, some sixty-odd years ago, that you were only, in sportive vein, throwing off so much light ballast to make room for the weightier material that was to steady you in the storm-tossed sea before you? Have you experienced the almost necessity of these little expansions of eccentricity as I have? Was there always in your heart, as a young man, as there is now in mine, a profound contempt for the opinions of your contemporaries? Did you continually find yourself repeating, '_Respice finem!_ Mark where I shall be yet'?” There was another investigation which touched me still more closely, but it was long before I could approach it I saw all the difficulty and delicacy of the inquiry; but, with that same recklessness of consequences which would make me catch at a queen by the back hair if I was drowning, I clutched at this discovery now, and, although trembling at my boldness, asked, “Was your Grace ever afraid? I know the impertinence of the question, but if you only guessed how it concerns me, you 'd forgive it. Nature has made me many things, but not courageous. Nothing on earth could induce me to risk life; the more I reason about it, the greater grows my repugnance. Now, I would like to hear, is this what anatomists call congenital? Am I likely to grow out of it? Shall I ever be a dare-devil, intrepid, fire-eating sort of creature? How will the change come over me? Shall I feel it coming? Will it come from within, or through external agencies? And when it has arrived, what shall I become? Am I destined to drive the Zouaves into the sea by a bayonet charge of the North Cork Rifles, or shall I only be great in council, and take weekly trips in the 'Fairy' to Cowes? I 'd like to know this, and begin a course of preparation for my position, as I once knew of a militia captain who hardened himself for a campaign by sleeping every night with his head on the window-stool.” As I opened my eyes, I saw the stern features in front of me. I thought the words, “I was never afraid, sir!” rang through my brain till they filled every ventricle with their din. “Not at Assaye?” “No, sir.” “Not at the Douro?” “No, sir.” “Not at Torres Vedras?” “I tell you again, no, sir!” Whether I uttered this last with any uncommon degree of vehemence or not, I so frightened Vaterchen that he cut a somersault clean over the chair, and stood grinning at me through the rails at the back of it I motioned to him to be reseated, while, passing my hand across my brow, I waved away the bright illusions that beset me, and, with a heavy sigh, re-entered the dull world of reality. “You are a clown,” said I, meditatively. “What is a clown?”