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Rh pride and intolerance, but it was of no use; so I skipped over the monk and tried to work out an oration—the Deemster's oration to the violator of the Temple,—and I wrote half-a-page of this oration, upon which I stopped. The right local colour would not tinge my words, the bustle about me, the shanties, the noise of the gangways, and the ceaseless rattle of the iron chains, fitted in so little with the atmosphere of the musty air of the dim Middle Ages, that was to envelop my drama as with a mist.

I bundled my papers together and got up.

All the same, I had got into a happy vein—a grand vein,—and I felt convinced that I could effect something if all went well.

If I only had a place to go to. I thought over it—stopped right there in the street and pondered, but I could not bring to mind a single quiet spot in the town where I could seat myself for an hour. There was no other way open; I would have to go back to the lodging-house in Vaterland. I shrank at the thought of it, and I told myself all the while that it would not do. I went ahead all the same, and approached nearer and nearer to the forbidden spot. Of course it was wretched.