Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/278

 it with his own hand, people fancied I was going to die, and that he was come up to seal my effects the moment the breath should be out of my body. But, if I do die, they sha'n't seal anything of mine, I'll take care of that; for I am no longer an English subject, and therefore they have nothing to do with me."

Again she asked me to take my pen and paper, and returned to the Duke of Wellington's letter. " I can't collect my ideas," she said: "one while I am thinking of what Mr. Pitt said of him; then of the letter he wrote when invited down to the country ball; then of what he is now: so put down your paper, and ring for a pipe. The duke is a man self-taught, for he was always in dissipation. I recollect, one day, Mr. Pitt came into the drawing-room to me—'Oh!' said he, 'how I have been bored by Sir Sydney coming with his box full of papers, and keeping me for a couple of hours, when I had so much to do!' I observed to him that heroes were generally vain: 'Lord Nelson is so.' ' So he is,' replied Mr. Pitt; 'but not like Sir Sydney: and how different is Arthur Wellesley, who has just quitted me! He has given me details so clear upon affairs in India! and he talked of them, too, as if he had been a surgeon of a regiment, and had nothing to do with them; so that I know not which to admire most, his modesty or his talents: and yet the fate of India depends upon them.'