CHAPTER LXX.

We stopped some time at one of the plantations, to rest ourselves and refresh the horses.  We had a chatty conversation with several gentlemen present; but there was one person, a middle aged man, with an absent look in his face, who simply glanced up, gave us good-day and lapsed again into the meditations which our coming had interrupted.  The planters whispered us not to mind him—­crazy.  They said he was in the Islands for his health; was a preacher; his home, Michigan.  They said that if he woke up presently and fell to talking about a correspondence which he had some time held with Mr. Greeley about a trifle of some kind, we must humor him and listen with interest; and we must humor his fancy that this correspondence was the talk of the world.

It was easy to see that he was a gentle creature and that his madness had nothing vicious in it.  He looked pale, and a little worn, as if with perplexing thought and anxiety of mind.  He sat a long time, looking at the floor, and at intervals muttering to himself and nodding his head acquiescingly or shaking it in mild protest.  He was lost in his thought, or in his memories.  We continued our talk with the planters, branching from subject to subject.  But at last the word “circumstance,” casually dropped, in the course of conversation, attracted his attention and brought an eager look into his countenance.  He faced about in his chair and said: 

“Circumstance?  What circumstance?  Ah, I know—­I know too well.  So you have heard of it too.” [With a sigh.] “Well, no matter—­all the world has heard of it.  All the world.  The whole world.  It is a large world, too, for a thing to travel so far in—­now isn’t it?  Yes, yes—­the Greeley correspondence with Erickson has created the saddest and bitterest controversy on both sides of the ocean—­and still they keep it up!  It makes us famous, but at what a sorrowful sacrifice!  I was so sorry when I heard that it had caused that bloody and distressful war over there in Italy.  It was little comfort to me, after so much bloodshed, to know that the victors sided with me, and the vanquished with Greeley.—­It is little comfort to know that Horace Greeley is responsible for the battle of Sadowa, and not me.

“Queen Victoria wrote me that she felt just as I did about it—­she said that as much as she was opposed to Greeley and the spirit he showed in the correspondence with me, she would not have had Sadowa happen for hundreds of dollars.  I can show you her letter, if you would like to see it.  But gentlemen, much as you may think you know about that unhappy correspondence, you cannot know the straight of it till you hear it from my lips.  It has always been garbled in the journals, and even in history.  Yes, even in history—­think of it!  Let me—­please let me, give you the matter, exactly as it occurred.  I truly will not abuse your confidence.”