road, and on which was displayed a statue of Charles II., with a painted angel on his head, and beneath his feet a carved lion and unicorn.  From Hunkerville House, in an easterly wind, you heard the peals of St. Marylebone.  Corleone Lodge was a Florentine palace of brick and stone, with a marble colonnade, built on pilework, at Windsor, at the head of the wooden bridge, and having one of the finest courts in England.

In the latter palace, near Windsor Castle, Josiana was within the queen’s reach.  Nevertheless, Josiana liked it.

Scarcely anything in appearance, everything in the root, such was the influence of Barkilphedro over the queen.  There is nothing more difficult than to drag up these bad grasses of the court—­they take a deep root, and offer no hold above the surface.  To root out a Roquelaure, a Triboulet, or a Brummel, is almost impossible.

From day to day, and more and more, did the queen take Barkilphedro into her good graces.  Sarah Jennings is famous; Barkilphedro is unknown.  His existence remains ignored.  The name of Barkilphedro has not reached as far as history.  All the moles are not caught by the mole-trapper.

Barkilphedro, once a candidate for orders, had studied a little of everything.  Skimming all things leaves naught for result.  One may be victim of the omnis res scibilis.  Having the vessel of the Danaides in one’s head is the misfortune of a whole race of learned men, who may be termed the sterile.  What Barkilphedro had put into his brain had left it empty.

The mind, like nature, abhors vacuum.  Into emptiness nature puts love; the mind often puts hate.  Hate occupies.

Hate for hate’s sake exists.  Art for art’s sake exists in nature more than is believed.  A man hates—­he must do something.  Gratuitous hate—­formidable word!  It means hate which is itself its own payment.  The bear lives by licking his claws.  Not indefinitely, of course.  The claws must be revictualled—­something must be put under them.

Hate indistinct is sweet, and suffices for a time; but one must end by having an object.  An animosity diffused over creation is exhausting, like every solitary pleasure.  Hate without an object is like a shooting-match without a target.  What lends interest to the game is a heart to be pierced.  One cannot hate solely for honour; some seasoning is necessary—­a man, a woman, somebody, to destroy.  This service of making the game interesting; of offering an end; of throwing passion into hate by fixing it on an object; of of amusing the hunter by the sight of his living prey; giving the watcher the hope of the smoking and boiling blood about to flow; of amusing the bird-catcher by the credulity of the uselessly-winged lark; of being a victim, unknowingly reared for murder by a master-mind—­all this exquisite and horrible service, of which the person rendering it is unconscious, Josiana rendered Barkilphedro.

Thought is a projectile.  Barkilphedro had, from the first day, begun to aim at Josiana the evil intentions which were in his mind.  An intention and a carbine are alike.  Barkilphedro aimed at Josiana, directing against the duchess all his secret malice.  That astonishes you!  What has the bird done at which you fire?  You want to eat it, you say.  And so it was with Barkilphedro.