* * * * *

I find my dogs’ feet on my knees.  I hear them whining and seeking me everywhere—­this is nonsense, but it is what they would do could they know how things are.  Poor Will Laidlaw! poor Tom Purdie! this will be news to wring your heart, and many a poor fellow’s besides to whom my prosperity was daily bread.

Ballantyne behaves like himself, and sinks his own ruin in contemplating mine.  I tried to enrich him indeed, and now all—­all is gone.  He will have the “Journal” still, that is a comfort, for sure they cannot find a better Editor. They—­alas! who will they be—­the unbekannten Obern who are to dispose of my all as they will?  Some hard-eyed banker; some of those men of millions whom I described.  Cadell showed more kind and personal feeling to me than I thought he had possessed.  He says there are some properties of works that will revert to me, the copy-money not being paid, but it cannot be any very great matter, I should think.

Another person did not afford me all the sympathy I expected, perhaps because I seemed to need little support, yet that is not her nature, which is generous and kind.  She thinks I have been imprudent, trusting men so far.  Perhaps so—­but what could I do?  I must sell my books to some one, and these folks gave me the largest price; if they had kept their ground I could have brought myself round fast enough by the plan of 14th December.  I now view matters at the very worst, and suppose that my all must go to supply the deficiencies of Constable.  I fear it must be so.  His connections with Hurst and Robinson have been so intimate that they must be largely involved.  This is the worst of the concern; our own is comparatively plain sailing.

Poor Gillies called yesterday to tell me he was in extremity.  God knows I had every cause to have returned him the same answer.  I must think his situation worse than mine, as through his incoherent, miserable tale, I could see that he had exhausted each access to credit, and yet fondly imagines that, bereft of all his accustomed indulgences, he can work with a literary zeal unknown to his happier days.  I hope he may labour enough to gain the mere support of his family.  For myself, the magic wand of the Unknown is shivered in his grasp.  He must henceforth be termed the Too-well-known.  The feast of fancy is over with the feeling of independence.  I can no longer have the delight of waking in the morning with bright ideas in my mind, haste to commit them to paper, and count them monthly, as the means of planting such groves, and purchasing such wastes; replacing my dreams of fiction by other prospective visions of walks by

    “Fountain heads, and pathless groves
    Places which pale passion loves."[77]

[Sidenote:  Footnote to page 44 in the original MS.:—­“Turn back to page 41 and 42.  I turned the page accidentally, and the partner of a bankrupt concern ought not to waste two leaves of paper.”]