I finished the quotation.—­“What fools these Christians are!” He burst into grim laughter.  “Here you have the paper,” said he, “and I must therefore send you back to the secretary’s office.  But there you must not be known.  Secrecy is essential even to your life.  Stabbing in Paris is growing common, and the knowledge that you had any other purpose than gambling, might be repaid by a poniard.”

He now prepared his note, and as he wrote, continued his conversation in fragments.  “Three-fourths of mankind are mere blunderers, and the more you know of them the more you will be of my opinion.  I am by no means sure that we have not some of them in Whitehall itself.  Pitt is a powerful man, and he alone keeps them together; without him they would be potsherds.—­Pitt thinks that we can go on without a war:  he is mistaken.  How is it possible to keep Europe in peace, when the Continent is as rotten as thatch, and France as combustible as gunpowder?—­The minister is a man of wonders, but he cannot prevent thirty millions of maniacs from playing their antics until they are cooled by blood-letting; or a hundred millions of Germans, Spaniards, Dutch, and Italians from being pilfered to their last coin!—­Old Frederick, the greatest genius that ever sat upon a German throne, saw this fifty years ago.  I have him at this moment before my eyes, as he walked with his hands behind his bent back in the little parterre of Sans Souci.  I myself heard him utter the words—­’If I were King of France, a cannon-shot should not be fired in Europe without my permission.’—­France is now governed by fools, and is nothing.  But if ever she shall have an able man at her head, she will realize old Frederick’s opinion.”

As no time was to be lost, I hurried with my note of introduction to Whitehall, was ushered through a succession of dingy offices into a small chamber, where I found, busily employed at an escrutoire, a young man of a heavy and yet not unintelligent countenance.  He read my note, asked me whether I had ever been in Paris, from which he had just returned; uttered a sentence or two in the worst possible French, congratulated me on the fluency of my answer, rang his bell, and handed me a small packet, endorsed—­most secret and confidential.  He then made the most awkward of bows; and our interview was at an end.  I saw this man afterwards prime minister.

Till now, the novelty and interest of any new purpose had kept me in a state of excitement; but I now found, to my surprise, my spirits suddenly flag, and a dejection wholly unaccountable seize upon me.  Perhaps something like this occurs after all strong excitement; but a cloud seemed actually to draw over my mind.  My thoughts sometimes even fell into confusion—­I deeply repented having involved myself in a rash design, which required qualities so much more experienced than mine; and in which, if I failed, the consequences might be so ruinous, not merely to my own character,