‘And is fame so small a thing?’ cried he.  ’Byfield, sir, is an aeronaut.  He apes the fame of a Lunardi, and is on the point of offering to the inhabitants—­I beg your pardon, to the nobility and gentry of our neighbourhood—­the spectacle of an ascension.  As one of the gentry concerned I may be permitted to remark that I am unmoved.  I care not a Tinker’s Damn for his ascension.  No more—­I breathe it in your ear—­does anybody else.  The business is stale, sir, stale.  Lunardi did it, and overdid it.  A whimsical, fiddling, vain fellow, by all accounts—­for I was at that time rocking in my cradle.  But once was enough.  If Lunardi went up and came down, there was the matter settled.  We prefer to grant the point.  We do not want to see the experiment repeated ad nauseam by Byfield, and Brown, and Butler, and Brodie, and Bottomley.  Ah! if they would go up and not come down again!  But this is by the question.  The University of Cramond delights to honour merit in the man, sir, rather than utility in the profession; and Byfield, though an ignorant dog, is a sound reliable drinker, and really not amiss over his cups.  Under the radiance of the kindly jar partiality might even credit him with wit.’

It will be seen afterwards that this was more my business than I thought it at the time.  Indeed, I was impatient to be gone.  Even as my friend maundered ahead a squall burst, the jaws of the rain were opened against the coffee-house windows, and at that inclement signal I remembered I was due elsewhere.

CHAPTER XXVI—­THE COTTAGE AT NIGHT

At the door I was nearly blown back by the unbridled violence of the squall, and Rowley and I must shout our parting words.  All the way along Princes Street (whither my way led) the wind hunted me behind and screamed in my ears.  The city was flushed with bucketfuls of rain that tasted salt from the neighbouring ocean.  It seemed to darken and lighten again in the vicissitudes of the gusts.  Now you would say the lamps had been blown out from end to end of the long thoroughfare; now, in a lull, they would revive, re-multiply, shine again on the wet pavements, and make darkness sparingly visible.

By the time I had got to the corner of the Lothian Road there was a distinct improvement.  For one thing, I had now my shoulder to the wind; for a second, I came in the lee of my old prison-house, the Castle; and, at any rate, the excessive fury of the blast was itself moderating.  The thought of what errand I was on re-awoke within me, and I seemed to breast the rough weather with increasing ease.  With such a destination, what mattered a little buffeting of wind or a sprinkle of cold water?  I recalled Flora’s image, I took her in fancy to my arms, and my heart throbbed.  And the next moment I had recognised the inanity of that fool’s paradise.  If I could spy her taper as she went to bed, I might count myself lucky.