were each
of us a plague to the other; and I often wondered that the forbearance and
benignity of my master was not at length exhausted, and that he did not
determine to thrust from him for ever so incessant an observer. There was indeed
one eminent difference between his share in the transaction and mine. I had some
consolation in the midst of my restlessness. Curiosity is a principle that
carries its pleasures as well as its pains along with it. The mind is urged by a
perpetual stimulus; it seems as if it were continually approaching to the end of
its race; and, as the insatiable desire of satisfaction is its principle of
conduct, so it promises itself in that satisfaction an unknown gratification,
which seems as if it were capable of fully compensating any injuries that may be
suffered in the career. But to Mr. Falkland there was no consolation. What he
endured in the intercourse between us appeared to be gratuitous evil. He had
only to wish that there was no such person as myself in the world, and to curse
the hour when his humanity led him to rescue me from my obscurity, and place me
in his service.
    A consequence produced upon me by the extraordinary nature of my situation
it is necessary to mention. The constant state of vigilance and suspicion in
which my mind was retained worked a very rapid change in my character. It seemed
to have all the effect that might have been expected from years of observation
and experience. The strictness with which I endeavoured to remark what passed in
the mind of one man, and the variety of conjectures into which I was led,
appeared as it were to render me a competent adept in the different modes in
which the human intellect displays its secret workings. I no longer said to
myself, as I had done in the beginning, »I will ask Mr. Falkland whether he were
the murderer.« On the contrary, after having carefully examined the different
kinds of evidence of which the subject was susceptible, and recollecting all
that had already passed upon the subject, it was not without considerable pain
that I felt myself unable to discover any way in which I could be perfectly and
unalterably satisfied of my patron's innocence. As to his guilt, I could
scarcely bring myself to doubt that in some way or other, sooner or later, I
should arrive at the knowledge of that, if it really existed. But I could not
endure to think almost for a moment of that side of the alternative as true;
and, with all my ungovernable suspicion, arising from the mysteriousness of the
circumstances, and all the