Mr. Topsparkle saw his wife's surroundings, and made no complaint. Among so many admirers there was no suspicion of a serious lover. It pleased him that when the French wit had refused his much-desired company to some of the finest houses in London, he was to be found in Soho Square--that Lord Bolingbroke would post all the way from Dawley, and go back after midnight by a dark road, in order to dine with Lady Judith and her set; it pleased him that Swift should glower and grumble in front of his hearth, pretending to despise all mankind, yet at heart the supplest courtier of them all, cringing to Lady Suffolk and fawning upon the Queen, negotiating the gift of a poplin gown to that royal lady with as much pains as if it had been the treaty of Hanover, hoping, despairing, plotting, hating, with a fiercer passion than is common to common men. Before Swift's scathing tongue and Swift's awful frown, even Lady Judith bowed her lofty crest. She fawned upon him, as he fawned upon the Queen and prime minister, and as the dog fawns upon his master, conscious of an undeniable superiority. With Voltaire she might presume to trifle--that light mocking nature of his encouraged trifling; but with Swift she was ever serious. And the Dean was himself of an unusually gloomy temper at this time, dangerous alike to friend and enemy, sparing no one with that bitter tongue of his, finding no pleasure in the things that pleased other people. Lord Bolingbroke said 'twas his tenderness of heart which made him such a savage. He was plunged in gloom on account of his sweet companion and _protégée_, Mrs. Johnson, who was slowly sinking into the grave. "Which he has dug for her," said Voltaire, who knew the story. "I do not wonder that your famous Irish wit has his dark moments, or that his thoughts sometimes waver between the woman whose heart is broke and the woman whose heart is breaking. I am quite ready to admit, with his lordship and Mr. Pope, that Swift is a staunch friend, and the cleverest squib-writer in Europe: I prostrate myself before a genius greater even than Rabelais; but I cannot esteem him a generous lover." "Do you not think he may have suffered even more than these simple, tender-hearted creatures, who were too officious in their love and too feeble in their sorrow?" speculated Bolingbroke. "I doubt that great heart of his has been wrung in many a silent agony. He loved Stella from her childhood with a protecting fatherly affection--" "I always mistrust fatherly affection in a man who is not a father," interjected Voltaire. "And if his fancy sometimes trifled in playful endearments," continued his lordship, "as even a father might trifle with his best-beloved child, I doubt if he was ever betrayed into a direct avowal of love. And then, touched and flattered by Vanessa's worship--"