Kindly as the words were uttered, and in a tone differing much from that which the King had hitherto used, the Duke took no heed of them. "Others wish for my place; God knows I wish they had it!" he cried, his agitation growing rather than decreasing. "Every hour, sir, I pray to be quit of the faction and perjury in which I live! Every hour I loathe more deeply the work I have to do and the people with whom I have to do it. I never go to my office but my gorge rises; nor leave it but I see the end. And yet I must stay in it! I must stay in it! I tell you, sir," he continued impetuously, "on the day that you burned those letters you but freed me from one slavery to fling me into another!" "Yet an honest one!" said the King in a peculiar tone. My lord threw up his hands. "You have a right to say that, sir. But if anyone else--or, no I--I forget myself." "Something has disturbed you," said the King intervening with much kindness. "Take time! And in the meanwhile, listen to me. As to the general distaste you express for my service, I will not, and I do not, do you the injustice to attribute it--whatever you say yourself--to your fears of what may happen in a possible event; I mean, _l'ancien régime restitué_. If such fears weighed so heavily with you, you would neither have signed the Invitation to me, nor come to me eight years ago. But I take it with perhaps some apprehensions of this kind, you have--and this is the real gist of the matter--a natural distaste for affairs, and a natural proneness to be on good terms with all, rogues as well as good men. It irks you to sign a death-warrant, to send one to Newgate, and another to--bah, I forget the names of your prisons; to know that your friends abroad are not as well placed at St. Germain's as they were at St. James's! You have no care to push an advantage, no anxiety to ruin a rival; you would rather trust a man than bind him. In a word, my lord, you have no taste for public life in dangerous and troubled times such as these; although perforce you have played a high part in it." "Sir!" the Duke cried, with an anxiety and eagerness that touched me, "you know me better than I know myself. You see my failings, my unfitness; and surely, seeing them so clearly, you will not refuse to----"