When my rally came, it came with a bound.

I said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me, and make me the greatest man in the kingdom besides; and straightway my mercury went up to the top of the tube, and my solicitudes all vanished.

I was as happy a man as there was in the world.
I was even impatient for to-morrow to come, I so wanted to gather in that great triumph and be the center of all the nation's wonder and reverence.

Besides, in a business way it would be the making of me; I knew that.
Meantime there was one thing which had got pushed into the background of my mind.

That was the half-conviction that when the nature of my proposed calamity should be reported to those superstitious people, it would have such an effect that they would want to compromise.