I took to my books, but my old friends were either very dull, or sleeping, or dreaming, and failed to take any interest in me. I rode out to my villages, on my fresh horses, and they gave me a good shaking up. The villagers failed to please me, as they formerly did. Evidently the times were out of joint, or I was, or something. We’ll leave it at the latter. Would you believe it, that in a few days, when I was just recovering from that fearful wide awake dream, and had called myself a fool a score of times for ever venturing to that place in Lucknow, that had been the dread of my life; that one morning the question came right to me, “Why not go again, and find out all about that Mr. Smith?” I was in the garden at the time, and I must have called out something terrible at myself, for all the malies came running to know what I wanted. I concluded I must be going daft, and to save appearances, told them that they must keep the walks cleaner, or I would cut their wages. I saw the nonsense of this, for there was not a weed or a blade of grass to be seen, and the paths were as smooth as a bald man’s head. But I was ready to break or cut something, I could not tell what or where. The question came again and again, and would not down, and the result was that I was on my way again to Lucknow. I knew what I was going for. I was Japhet in search of his father. But why? Yes, why? I have often wondered why people do certain things, even to their own hurt. I have put the question to them, and the answer was: “They couldn’t help it.” There seems to be a tide in the affairs of men, and often a big flood tide that carries them whether they will or not. Good, old Æneas was impelled by fate, and so it seems are all other men. I was going, I knew that, impelled to go, and all the time calling myself a fool. I might be going to my degradation, my death, my damnation, yet I must go. Men will worry their lives away in trying to invent some powder to blow other men to bits, yet knowing all the time, ten chances to one, they may blow their own heads off first, yet they keep on trying. But what is the use of any further explanation when everybody knows what I mean, that when the devil of curiosity takes possession of us, as it did of our mother Eve, as the story goes, we do not think of consequences. I went directly to the bungalow of M. Le Maistre, and he received me most cordially. I told him that I came to look up the record of that Mr. Smith, as every one ought to have some interest in his paternal parent. He looked at me with a peculiar expression on his face, showing that he thought me a queer lot, but it was not in his French blood to say anything to hurt my feelings.