Brunow was a queerish sort of study, and I honestly believe that half the harm he did sprang out of the only little bit of good I was ever able to discover in him. He would do almost anything to secure anybody's favorable opinion, and neither his judgment nor his conscience--if he had either one or the other--stood in the way of this amiable weakness. He was more amenable to flattery than a child, and was moved by it as easily to good as to evil. The misfortune was that those who would have cared to influence him in the right direction disdained to tickle his foible, while those who fooled him to his own ruin flattered him to the top of his bent. I can't help thinking that for a long time the poor feather-head attached a considerable value to my opinion, and that he was anxious in his own way to conciliate my friendship. He knew what I thought about him, and yet he sought my acquaintance, and did what he could to propitiate me and to secure my good-will; but at last an open breach declared itself between us. It came about in this wise: I was sitting in my chambers one afternoon when the count called upon me. We had had a rather stormy discussion at our last meeting, and I had had to take sides against him. He was on fire for immediate action, and I had felt it my duty to plead for delay. We had parted rather hotly, and he made it his first business to apologize to me for something into which his enthusiasm had hurried him. This being over, we sat in silence for some time, and I saw at last that something was weighing on his mind. “I was ungenerous and wrong last night,” he said at last, “and I feel it all the more because I am here to ask you now for a special favor.” “My dear count,” I said, “we have the same hopes, and we disagree sometimes about the proper means of reaching them. I think there is no possibility of a quarrel between us. However much we disagree, we feel no rancor.” “Rancor!” cried the count. “Good God! my dear Fyffe, how should there be rancor in my mind to you.” He held out his hand, and I shook it heartily. The truest and easiest way of getting to like a man is to do him a service; that makes you wish him well forever afterwards. I should have honored and esteemed the Count Rossano if he had not been his daughter's father. As it was, I had an affection for him which it would not be easy for me to overstate. “I have so few friends,” said the count, when our reconciliation was complete, “and I am so much in need of advice, that I venture to trouble you, my dear Fyffe, in a matter of great delicacy.” I told him, I forget precisely in what terms, that I was entirely at his service; and after another hesitating pause he blurted out the truth.