It may well be supposed, therefore, that, having so early awakened within me what may be philosophically called the _transcendental_ justice of Christianity, I blamed not _Turk_ for yielding to the coercion of his nature. He had killed the object of my love. But, besides that he was under the constraint of a primary appetite--Turk was himself the victim of a killing oppression. He was doomed to a fretful existence so long as he should exist at all. Nothing could reconcile this to my benignity, which at that time rested upon two pillars--upon the deep, deep heart which God had given to me at my birth, and upon exquisite health. Up to the age of two, and almost through that entire space of twenty-four months, I had suffered from ague; but when _that_ left me, all germs and traces of ill health fled away for ever--except only such (and those how curable!) as I inherited from my schoolboy distresses in London, or had created by means of opium. Even the long ague was not without ministrations of favour to my prevailing temper; and on the whole, no subject for pity; since naturally it won for me the sweet caresses of female tenderness both young and old. I was a little petted; but you see by this time, reader, that I must have been too much of a philosopher, even in the year one _ab urbe condita_ of my frail earthly tenement, to abuse such indulgence. It also won for me a ride on horseback whenever the weather permitted. I was placed on a pillow, in front of a cankered old man, upon a large white horse, not so young as _I_ was, but still showing traces of blood. And even the old man, who was both the oldest and the worst of the three, talked with gentleness to myself, reserving his surliness--for all the rest of the world.