Nothing, up to that period, except the respect paid me, had enlightened me, or even roused my suspicions.

I lived as children, as birds, as plants, as the air and the sun do.

I had just turned my fifteenth year--" "This, then, is eight years ago ?" "Yes, nearly; but I have ceased to reckon time." "Excuse me; but what did your tutor tell you, to encourage you to work ?" "He used to say that a man was bound to make for himself, in the world, that fortune which Heaven had refused him at his birth.

He added that, being a poor, obscure orphan, I had no one but myself to look to; and that nobody either did, or ever would, take any interest in me.

I was, then, in the hall I have spoken of, asleep from fatigue with long fencing.