“If there be a faith to the public,” he retorted, “there is also a faith to a friend. It is a widest rumor that Eaton is to be of my cabinet. Folk are morally sure of it as much as folk may be of what sits in the antechamber of time. Should he not be named, that fact will be held as an endorsement of these slanders. It will destroy Eaton; worse, it will destroy Peg. Do you counsel that? Must that be done in the name of Public Good?” The General now was speaking in a cold, contained way for all his late pipe-smashing, and you are not to infer, from any verbal force displayed, a shouting anger. Wroth he was; but, nathe-less, low-voiced and steady as with a kind of tranquility of fury. “Must my friend be abased, insulted--must a sweet, true woman suffer harm for that you say a public interest asks it? Sir, you speak folly and propose disgrace. There can be no public good to come from private wrong. And if it were so, still I should stand the same. I've suffered many tests for the public you prate of; I've abode the death-chances of a hundred battles; I've marched to the public's wars when, spent and weak, I must be lifted to the saddle; in no way have I spared or saved myself. But I will spare my friend; I'll save a woman's honor; aye! spare and save them though your public interest perish in their steads. You could name no altar whereon I would make such sacrifices. The honor of a woman--to safeguard her good fame--is the first duty of a man. It is before friendship, before patriotism; it has precedence over things public or private. What you offer spells ruin for a woman--ruin for Peg whom my wife has loved and kissed! I will not do it. I say it again: Eaton for the cabinet it should be though it were the last act of my life. More; if I were capable of beginning my administration with treason to a friend, I might surely look to conclude it with treason to the people.” You are to know that the General made these long orations walking the floor, and in a manner jerky and declamatory, though not loud. There might be spaces of silence between sentences measured by two and three steps; and much of the time his eye left me and he was like one who debates with himself. I ramble off his utterances somewhat in full; for I not only regard the sentiments expressed as creditable to the General himself, but am disposed to give you the truth of him as one who, while right oftener than most men, and as set for justice as a pair of scales, on this as on every other strong occasion did his thinking with his heart. Also, while he never said the word, it ran in him like a torrent that his wife, were she with him, would shield poor Peg at whatever vital cost; and of itself that was equal to the sweeping down of reasons strong as oak or adamant.