Nor did he intend to pursue his journey in such a way as to overtask her strength or injure her health. He cared not how much time elapsed before its completion. It would certainly employ years; it mattered not how many. When winter rendered travelling painful, he could take up his abode in a metropolis abounding in luxuries. During the summer heats he might fix himself in some villa, where the season would be mitigated to pleasantness. If impelled by a capricious predilection, he could stay for months in any chance-selected spot; but his home was, with Elizabeth beside him, in his travelling carriage. Perpetual change would baffle pursuit if any were set on foot; while the restlessness of his life, the petty annoyances and fleeting pleasures of a traveller's existence, would serve to occupy his mind, and prevent its being mastered by those passions to which one victim had been immolated, and which rendered the remnant of his days loathsome to himself. "I have determined to live," he thought, "and I must therefore ensure the means of life. I must adopt a method by which I can secure for each day that stock of patience which is necessary to lead me to the end of it. In the plan I have laid down, every day will have a task to be fulfilled, and while I employ myself in executing it, I need look neither before nor behind; and each day added thus, one by one, to one another, will form months and years, and I shall grow old travelling post over Europe." His resolution made, he was eager to enter on his travels, which, singular to say, he performed even in the very manner he had determined; for the slight changes in the exact route, introduced afterward from motives of convenience or pleasure, might be deemed rather as in accordance with, than deviating from, his original project. Falkner was not a man ordinarily met with. He possessed wild and fierce passions, joined to extreme sensibility, beneficence, and generosity. His boyhood had been rendered miserable by the violence of a temper roused to anger even from trifles. Collision with his fellow-creatures, a sense of dignity with his equals, and of justice towards his inferiors, had subdued this; still his blood was apt to boil when roused by any impediment to his designs, or the sight of injury towards others, and it was with great difficulty that he kept down the outward marks of indignation or contempt. To tame the vehemence of his disposition, he had endeavoured to shackle his imagination, and to cultivate his reason--and perhaps he fancied that he succeeded best when, in fact, he entirely failed. As now, when he took the little orphan with him away from all the ties of blood--the manners and customs of her country--from the discipline of regular education, and the society of others of her sex--had not Elizabeth been the creature she was, with a character not to be disharmonized by any circumstances, this had been a fearful experiment.