But whether pardoned or not I shall always be Your most affectionate friend, ST.

BUNGAY.
The Duke,--our Duke,--on reading this letter was by no means pleased by its contents.

He could ill bear to be reminded either of his pride or of his diffidence.

And yet the accusations which others made against him were as nothing to those with which he charged himself.
He would do this till at last he was forced to defend himself against himself by asking himself whether he could be other than as God had made him.

It is the last and the poorest makeshift of a defence to which a man can be brought in his own court! Was it his fault that he was so thin-skinned that all things hurt him?
When some coarse man said to him that which ought not to have been said, was it his fault that at every word a penknife had stabbed him?
Other men had borne these buffets without shrinking, and had shown themselves thereby to be more useful, much more efficacious; but he could no more imitate them than he could procure for himself the skin of a rhinoceros or the tusk of an elephant.