Yes, when Major Duvent challenged the great Israel Lyon to fight with pistols, and said to him, “If you do not meet me, Mr. Lyon, you are a dog;” the latter replied, “I would rather be a live dog than a dead lion!” and he was right. I have fought often enough, Madam, to dare to say this, God be praised! I live! Red life pulses in my veins; earth yields beneath my feet; in the glow of love I embrace trees and statues, and they live in my embrace. Every woman is to me the gift of a world. I revel in the melody of her countenance, and with a single glance of my eye I can enjoy more than others with their every limb through all their lives. Every instant is to me an eternity. I do not measure time with the ell of Brabant or of Hamburg, and I need no priest to promise me a second life, for I can live enough in this life, when I live backwards in the life of those who have gone before me, and win myself an eternity in the realm of the past. And I live! The great pulsation of nature beats too in my breast; and when I carol aloud I am answered by a thousandfold echo. I hear a thousand nightingales. Spring has sent them to awaken earth from her morning slumber, and earth trembles with ecstasy. Her flowers are hymns, which she sings in inspiration to the sun. The sun moves far too slowly. I would fain lash on his steeds that they might advance more rapidly. But when he sinks hissing in the sea, and the night rises with her passionate eyes, oh! then true pleasure first thrills through me, the evening breezes lie like flattering maidens on my wild heart, and the stars wink to me, and I rise and sweep over the little earth and the little thoughts of men. Madam, I have deceived you. I am not the Count of the Ganges. Never in my life have I seen the holy stream, nor the lotus-flowers which are mirrored in its sacred waves. Never did I lie dreaming under Indian palms, nor in prayer before the Diamond Deity Juggernaut, who with his diamonds might have easily aided me out of my difficulties. I have no more been in Calcutta than the turkey, of which I ate yesterday at dinner, had ever been in the realms of the Grand Turk. Yet my ancestors came from Hindustan, and therefore I feel so much at my ease in the great forest of song of Valmiki. The heroic sorrows of the divine Ramo move my heart like familiar griefs; from the flower lays of Kalidasa the sweetest memories bloom; and when a few years ago a gentle lady in Berlin showed me the beautiful pictures which her father, who had been Governor in India, had brought from thence, the delicately-painted, holy, calm faces seemed as familiar to me as though I were gazing at my own family gallery.