to hold his elevated position he could serenely enjoy by contemplation of them in others.  Thus:—­wonder at Master Richard’s madness:  though he himself did not experience it, he was eager to mark the effect on his beloved relatives.  As he carried along his vindictive hunch of cake, he shaped out their different attitudes of amaze, bewilderment, horror; passing by some personal chagrin in the prospect.  For his patron had projected a journey, commencing with Paris, culminating on the Alps, and lapsing in Rome:  a delightful journey to show Richard the highways of History and tear him from the risk of further ignoble fascinations, that his spirit might be altogether bathed in freshness and revived.  This had been planned during Richard’s absence to surprise him.

Now the dream of travel was to Adrian what the love of woman is to the race of young men.  It supplanted that foolishness.  It was his Romance, as we say; that buoyant anticipation on which in youth we ride the airs, and which, as we wax older and too heavy for our atmosphere, hardens to the Hobby, which, if an obstinate animal, is a safer horse, and conducts man at a slower pace to the sexton.  Adrian had never travelled.  He was aware that his romance was earthly and had discomforts only to be evaded by the one potent talisman possessed by his patron.  His Alp would hardly be grand to him without an obsequious landlord in the foreground:  he must recline on Mammon’s imperial cushions in order to moralize becomingly on the ancient world.  The search for pleasure at the expense of discomfort, as frantic lovers woo their mistresses to partake the shelter of a but and batten on a crust, Adrian deemed the bitterness of beggarliness.  Let his sweet mistress be given him in the pomp and splendour due to his superior emotions, or not at all.  Consequently the wise youth had long nursed an ineffectual passion, and it argued a great nature in him, that at the moment when his wishes were to be crowned, he should look with such slight touches of spleen at the gorgeous composite fabric of Parisian cookery and Roman antiquities crumbling into unsubstantial mockery.  Assuredly very few even of the philosophers would have turned away uncomplainingly to meaner delights the moment after.

Hippias received the first portion of the cake.

He was sitting by the window in his hotel, reading.  He had fought down his breakfast with more than usual success, and was looking forward to his dinner at the Foreys’ with less than usual timidity.

“Ah! glad you’ve come, Adrian,” he said, and expanded his chest.  “I was afraid I should have to ride down.  This is kind of you.  We’ll walk down together through the park.  It’s absolutely dangerous to walk alone in these streets.  My opinion is, that orange-peel lasts all through the year now, and will till legislation puts a stop to it.  I give you my word I slipped on a piece of orange-peel yesterday afternoon in Piccadilly, and I thought I was down!  I saved myself by a miracle.”