Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/262

 wonders of Birmingham, I can give you letters that will open the sealed doors of that great workshop.

"I owe much to you, my dear friend—for strength in moments of weakness for consolation in severe trouble—for new lights of thought anent the barrenness of life. On your leaving this part of the world I would tender in lieu of payment my warmest wishes and my affectionate regards. Do not reject the worthless offering.

"For myself I am going through a wondrous change of thought and feeling, and when you see me again, if you ever do see me again, you will find me an altered man, perhaps neither a wiser nor a better.

"Adieu, my dear Duffy, and God grant protection to you and yours on your journey. May your life be long and prosperous, full of usefulness and honour."

Cashel Hoey at the same time recorded a strange adventure of his own:—"I believe I last wrote to you from Paris in April, and if I remember rightly I told you I was going to see the Emperor the next week. He gave me a very long private audience—that is to say, of thirty-five minutes—during which we both talked with uncommon activity. I need hardly tell you he talks well, clearly, easily, unaffectedly, and to the point. This you have heard, as well as that when he speaks to strangers in private audience he throws off the Emperor very completely. I was prepared for all this, and still the man's manner amazed me. I have seldom seen the face of a man of mature age over which expression flitted so fast, or which smiled so often in five minutes' time. He laughed until his great moustache broke into a jungle of jolly individual hairs at one or two things I happened to say, which were perhaps humorous, but not sufficiently so for transportation to Australia at this time of day. I had the idea that I was to deal with a Sphinx, and a man in a mask, and all that. I came away, sure at all events, that that reading of the riddle is rubbish. Physically he seems to be at present very strong—a clean, saffron skin, nerves perfectly taut, not a bloodshot vein in his eye. But he smoked all the time he was talking to me, and I believe smoked all day long. He is very small. You know my height. Our noses were within a foot of each other all the time we spoke, and I found