I write to you from a bed of pain, bruised, wounded, burnt, half dead.  It served me right, you will say, on learning that I am here for the commission of the greatest crime that can be tried before your tribunal.  It is only too true—­I have saved the life of an ugly woman!

But I saved her at night, when I innocently supposed her beautiful—­let this be the extenuating circumstance.  That no delay may attend your decision, here is the whole story.

Travel from pole to pole—­wander to and fro over the world, it is not impossible, by God’s help, to escape the thousand and one annoyances that are scattered over the surface of this terraqueous globe, but it is impossible, go where you will, to evade England, the gayest nation to be found, especially in travelling.

At Rome, this winter, Lord K. told me seriously that he had set out from London, some years since, with the one object of finding some corner of the earth on which no foot had ever trod before, and there to fix the first glorious impress of a British boot.  The English occasionally, for amusement, indulge in such notions.

After having examined a scale of the comparative heights of the mountains of the universe, he noted the two highest points.  Lord K. first reached the Peruvian Andes, and began to climb the sides of Chimborazo with that placidity, that sang-froid, which is the characteristic of an elevated soul instinctively attracted to realms above.

Reaching the summit with torn feet and bleeding hands, he was about to fix a conqueror’s grasp upon the rock, when he saw in one of the crevices a heap of visiting-cards, placed there successively, during a half century, by two or three hundred of his compatriots.

Disappointed but not discouraged, Lord K. drew from his case a shining, satiny card, and having gravely added it to the many others, began to descend Chimborazo with the same coolness and deliberation that he had climbed up.

Half way down he found himself face to face with Sir Francis P., about to attempt the ascent that Lord K. had just accomplished.  Although alienated by difference of party, they were old friends, dating their acquaintance, I believe, from the University of Oxford.

Without appearing astonished at so unexpected an encounter, they bowed politely, and on Chimborazo, as in politics, went their separate ways.

Betrayed by the New World, Lord K. directed his steps towards the Old.  He penetrated the heart of Asia, plunged into the Dobrudja region, and paused only at the foot of Tschamalouri, upon the borders of Bootan.  It is fair that I should thus visit on you the formidable erudition inflicted upon me by Milord.

You must know, then, dear Edgar, that the Tschamalouri is the highest peak of the Himalayan group.

The Jungfrau, Mount Blanc, Mount Cervin, and Mount Rosa, piled one upon the other, would make at best but a stepping-stone to it.  Judge, then, of Milord’s transports in the presence of this giant, whose hoary head was lost in the clouds!  They might rob him of Chimborazo, but Tschamalouri was his.