smile,--that I was slow at my letters and quick with my tongue; and
throughout the whole house nothing was so favourite a topic as the
extent of my rudeness and the venom of my repartee. Montreuil, on his
entrance into our family, not only fell in with, but favoured and
fostered, the reigning humour against me; whether from that /divide et
impera/ system, which was so grateful to his temper, or from the mere
love of meddling and intrigue, which in him, as in Alberoni, attached
itself equally to petty as to large circles, was not then clearly
apparent; it was only certain that he fomented the dissensions and
widened the breach between my brothers and myself. Alas! after all, I
believe my sole crime was my candour. I had a spirit of frankness which
no fear could tame, and my vengeance for any infantine punishment was in
speaking veraciously of my punishers. Never tell me of the pang of
falsehood to the slandered: nothing is so agonizing to the fine skin of
vanity as the application of a rough truth!

As I grew older, I saw my power and indulged it; and, being scolded for
sarcasm, I was flattered into believing I had wit; so I punned and
jested, lampooned and satirized, till I was as much a torment to others
as I was tormented myself. The secret of all this was that I was
unhappy. Nobody loved me: I felt it to my heart of hearts. I was
conscious of injustice, and the sense of it made me bitter. Our
feelings, especially in youth, resemble that leaf which, in some old
traveller, is described as expanding itself to warmth, but when chilled,
not only shrinking and closing, but presenting to the spectator thorns
which had lain concealed upon the opposite side of it before.

With my brother Gerald, I had a deadly and irreconcilable feud. He was
much stouter, taller, and stronger than myself; and, far from conceding
to me that respect which I imagined my priority of birth entitled me to