I helped him to set his chemicals right, urging on him that the thing was very serious, and that he must attend to it; but he only replied: "You think about it for me while I am finishing this. Now don't spoil this for me. It will do presently!" and I subsided with the _Times_ while he worked at his crucibles, and jotted down results--absolutely absorbed for more than two hours, and only brought back to politics by my call of "You absolutely must start now." He had a wonderful little machine--a balance that gave the weight of almost infinitesimal parts of a grain--and this might be touched by no one but himself. He now reluctantly covered it with its glass case and lovingly padded it round with a cloth, lest a rough movement in the room should put it out of balance. I said, "Now, my King, you must attend to the _Times_. You must take an action against them." "No. Why should I?" struggling into his coat as I held it for him. "I have never taken any notice of any newspapers, nor of anyone. Why should I now?" However, he promised me he would consult the "Party" about the letters, and left assuring me that the English _Times_ was a paper of no particular importance, after all. He got home before I did that evening, and I found him on my return weighing the infinitesimal specks of his morning's extraction of gold with the utmost accuracy. He gave me a smile and the fire-flame of his welcoming eyes as usual, but murmured, "Don't speak for one moment; I'll tell you the moment I have finished this," and I had to sit with as much patience as I could muster while he finished his calculations. Then, coming over to me in triumph, he informed my for once uninterested ears {259} that he had now completed the extraction of something or other of a grain of the gold for my wedding ring. On my firmly recalling his attention to the matter of the letters he said wearily--all the interest and buoyancy gone--"They want me to fight it, but it will be a terrible nuisance, my Queenie; I have seen Lewis, and he is going to see Russell--Sir Charles, you know--and then I am to see him again." He was very undecided about the necessity of taking the action against the _Times_, and more than once pointed out to me that the opinion of that paper and its readers did not really interest him; but, on my refusing to accept this at all, and urging that Ireland required that he should defend himself in this, and that my view was that of the Irish Party, he promised to take the matter seriously, merely remarking with an amused cynicism that if Ireland wanted him to cudgel a clean bill of health out of England she would find work for all the blackthorns she grew.