"Not to-day, sir, if you please," said Linden: "I feel so very weak."

"As you please, Clarence; but some years hence you will learn the
value of the present. Youth is always a procrastinator, and,
consequently, always a penitent." And thus Talbot ran on into a
strain of conversation, half serious, half gay, which lasted till
Clarence went upstairs to lie down and muse on Lady Flora Ardenne.




CHAPTER XLVIII.

La vie eat un sommeil. Les vieillards sont ceux dont le sommeil a ete
plus long: ils ne commencent a se reveiller que quand il faut mourir.
--LA BRUYERE.

["Life is a sleep. The aged are those whose sleep has been the
longest they begin to awaken themselves just as they are obliged to
die."]


"You wonder why I have never turned author, with my constant love of
literature and my former desire of fame," said Talbot, as he and
Clarence sat alone after dinner, discussing many things: "the fact is,
that I have often intended it, and as often been frightened from my
design. Those terrible feuds; those vehement disputes; those
recriminations of abuse, so inseparable from literary life,--appear to
me too dreadful for a man not utterly hardened or malevolent
voluntarily to encounter. Good Heavens! what acerbity sours the blood