He continued making some new arrangement of the bandages on his patient’s wounds, and without taking the slightest notice of my displeasure, cheered his work with a song. “Mad or wise,” said I in soliloquy, “I shall lie in the ditch of that fortress, or in its citadel, before next sunrise.” “You may lie in both,” said the beggar, pursuing his occupation and his song. “Mad! Why not?—all the world is in the same way. The Emperor is mad enough to stay where men have hands and knives. His people are mad enough to let their throats be cut by him. Florus is mad enough to sleep another night in Palestine. You are mad enough to attack his garrison; and I—am mad enough to go along with you.” “You are a singular being. But will you hazard your neck for nothing?” [Sidenote: The Importance of a Letter] “Custom makes everything easy,” observed he, spanning his muscular neck with his hand; “I have been so many years within sight of the cord, and all other expeditious modes of paying the only debt I ever intend to pay, and that only because it is the last, that I care as little about the venture as any broken gambler about his last coin. Well then, my plan is this: I must get into the town; you must gather your troop without noise and be ready for my signal, a light from one of the towers. A false attack must be made on the gates, a true attack must be made by the portcullis, which, if it be not stopped up, I will unlock; and your highness may eat your next supper off the governor’s plate. There’s a plan for you! I should have been a general. But merit—aye, there’s the rub—merit is like the camel’s lading: it stops him at the gate, while the empty slip in. It is like putting wings upon one’s shoulders, when the race is to be run upon the ground. Too much brain in a man is like too much bend in a bow; the bow either breaks, or sends the arrow a mile beyond the mark. Genius, my prince, is——” I interrupted the general in his progress into the philosopher, and demanded whether the renewed vigilance of the fortress would not require some additional expedient for his entry. He struck his forehead; the thought came, as the flint gives its spark, and he produced a highly ornamented tablet.