“I do not believe that I have done any harm; in fact, my theory would forbid me to think so; but it also informs me that my role is not to be that of a schoolmaster.

“I shall be a poor man, of course; poor, that is, for an independent gentleman.  I wish I were a Fellow of a College at Cambridge; I would try and be as ideal as Gray in that position.”

CHAPTER V

In April he was released from his engagement, and he immediately went abroad, alone.  He travelled through Normandy into Brittany, spending two months at a little village called Chanteuil, not far from the Point du Sillon.  Here he wandered about mostly alone, dressed in the roughest possible costume, and allowing his beard to grow.  “At Chanteuil I first learnt how to think, or rather how to converse with myself as I had before done with other persons; I also found for the first time that I did not dislike my own company.”

In June he went south, sailing from Brest to Bordeaux, and then descending by land into Spain, where he remained till August.  Here he spent a long time in exploring the table-land between the Asturian Mountains and the sea, and then from Burgos visiting Madrid, Toledo, Ciudad, and Seville, and so to Gibraltar.  From Gibraltar he sailed up the south-east coast, and settled himself for another month at a little village called Benigarcia, about five miles east of Sorrion, on the river Mijares.  In November he sailed by Minorca, starting from Barcelona, to Sicily, and spent the rest of the year in the north of Italy, sailing from Sicily to Genoa, and settling at a village called Riviglio, not very far from Verona.  He was obliged to adopt this plan of settling, as his exchequer was not large.  From this place he visited Venice on foot, and early in the year visited Rome and Florence, sailing from Ancona in March for Spalatro, and worked up through Hungary to a little place called Bochnia, on the Vistula, down which river he went by boat to Konigsberg, staying in Warsaw a few weeks.  Once on the Baltic, he hired a fishing-boat, and spent a month in cruising about, during which time he discovered, or rather unearthed, an island, which formed the subject of the only letter he wrote to me during his entire absence.

     “Copenhagen, June, 1876.

“My dear Carr,

“I am writing this on board the fishing-smack Paradys, which is at this moment lying in Copenhagen Roads, being myself owner by hire and supercargo of the same.  The first object of my note is to assure you of my existence, as your letter which was forwarded after me to Danzig seemed to imply uncertainty on that point, and moreover expressed a strange solicitude as to my well-being which was by no means unpleasing to me; then to request you to perform several small commissions for me....