"Königsmarck spoke for an hour, mentioning no names, so that I who from
my youth have lived apart could not make a guess. He spoke with a deal
of passion; it seemed that one hour his life was paradise and the next a
hell. Even as he spoke he was one instant all faith and the next all
despair. One moment he was filled with his unworthiness and wonder that
so noble a creature as a woman should bend her heart and lips from her
heaven down to his earth. The next he could not conceive any man should
be such a witless ass as to stake his happiness on the steadiness of so
manifest a weathercock as a woman's favour. It was all very strange
talk; it opened to me, just as when a fog lifts and rolls down again, a
momentary vision of a world of colours in which I had no share; and to
tell the truth it left me with a suspicion which has recurred again and
again, that all my solitary years over my books, all the delights which
the delicate turning of a phrase, or the chase and capture of an elusive
idea, can bring to one may not be worth, after all, one single minute of
living passion. Passion, Chevalier! There is a word of which I know the
meaning only by hearsay. But I wonder at times, whatever harm it works,
whether there can be any great thing without it. But you are anxious to
go forward upon your way."
He again took up his lamp, and requesting Wogan to follow him, unlatched
the window. Wogan, however, did not move.
"I am wondering," said he, "whether I might be yet deeper in your debt.
I left behind me a sword."
Count Otto set his lamp down and took a sword from the corner of the
room.
"I called it an ornament, and yet in other hands it might well prove a
serviceable weapon. The blade is of Spanish steel. You will honour me by
wearing it."
Wogan was in two minds with regard to the Count. On the one hand, he was
most grateful; on the other he could not but think that over his books
he had fallen into a sickly way of thought. He was quite ready, however,
to wear his sword; moreover, when he had hooked the hanger to his belt
he looked about the room.
"I had a pistol," he said carelessly, "a very useful thing is a pistol,
more useful at times than a sword."