"A strange fire had been running through my veins all day since that meeting in the morning. I felt as elated as if I were a god. There was enough indeed to elate me without that: it was my fortieth birthday, and I could remind myself that before my fortieth birthday I had won the Battle of the Nile. In honour of my birthday the Ambassador and Lady H. had given a party of unprecedented magnificence. Above eighty sat down to dinner; above seventeen hundred not only accepted, but came to the ball which followed. Supper was laid for eight hundred. In the ball-room there was a rostral column erected in my honour under a magnificent canopy, never to come down while we remain at Naples, and the Ambassador whispered to me that he had it on good authority that I should have a peerage at least, if not a viscounty. In the middle of the entertainment, 'God Save the King' was sung, without foreknowledge on my part, by the crew of my barge, with an additional verse in my honour writ by Miss Knight. "All this until that boy's conduct threatened to pull down the house about my ears! The King and all his court were there, too, lavishing compliments upon me which I felt to be extravagant, though I was sensible that I had probably saved his kingdom for him. The whole room buzzed with my name. 'H. N.' or 'Nelson and Victory,' met my eye everywhere, and the room was full of the heroes who had won my victory for me, and yet offered me its whole honour. It was a marvellous night, and if it had been in London and not in Naples, with my own nation round me, surely no mortal man could have known a more intoxicating moment. "All this until that boy!... And yet I can confess to you, Pen, that in the midst of all this justifiable elation, I did not forget what had happened in the morning when that glorious beauty had been held up for the moment for my kiss of friendship. I could not help reminding myself that a new friendship had begun for me of an intoxicating sweetness, not known to me in my earlier friendships: a friendship in which sympathy of the mind and tastes was accompanied by the light touch which I had previously associated with the beginnings of first love, and not with the more solid sympathies of friendship. All this until that boy....