My master further gave me on his own part his most
gracious promise that he would not disclose the matter even to Madame de
Verneuil or the queen, and upon these representations he induced me freely
to forgive the innkeeper. So ended this conspiracy, on the diverting
details of which I may seem to have dwelt longer than I should; but alas!
in twenty-one years of power I investigated many, and this one only can I
regard with satisfaction. The rest were so many warnings and predictions
of the fate which, despite all my care and fidelity, was in store for the
great and good master I served.
Robert Louis Stevenson
_The Pavilion on the Links_
I
I was a great solitary when I was young. I made it my pride to keep aloof
and suffice for my own entertainment; and I may say that I had neither
friends nor acquaintances until I met that friend who became my wife and
the mother of my children. With one man only was I on private terms; this
was R. Northmour, Esquire, of Graden Easter, in Scotland. We had met at
college; and though there was not much liking between us, nor even much
intimacy, we were so nearly of a humor that we could associate with ease
to both. Misanthropes, we believed ourselves to be; but I have thought
since that we were only sulky fellows. It was scarcely a companionship,
but a co-existence in unsociability.
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