"No, because you are interested in the matter. You cannot truly place the small end of the telescope to your eye, and see yourself at the other. You cannot stand, for instance, as I stand, and see yourself as I see you. But study the subject a little before you give way to the identical petulant humours with which you would quarrel in your mistress."
"And how long is it, pray, Sir Sage, since you took the beam from your own eye. If mine deceived me not, I saw you but a little while since swelling with all the offended dignity of majesty itself--merely because some more fortunate swain had previously secured the hand of the Governor's fair niece."
"You are as far wrong in my affairs, Charles, as you were just now in your own. You seem peculiarly predisposed to-night, to see only the surface of things. Suppose that some half a dozen of those butterflies who are now congregating round Lady Berkley, were to form a plot by which you were to be deprived of the hand of that lady whom you most desired to lead to the dance? Nay, more, suppose that you considered it all important to your interests that you should possess the hand on this particular night, and that you should be thwarted by such a contrivance of _sub vice-royalty_! What would you do? Would you content yourself with spending your rage upon your own lips between your teeth?"
"No, by heavens, I would tweak the nose of a small sprig of royalty itself."
"What, under the circumstances and responsibilities that environ us to-night?"
"No! not to-night certainly; there is no hurry in the business--his nasal organ will be as tangible a week hence as now, I suppose; but who is it that has done this deed? I see you have many rivals."
"You see," continued Bacon, "that I have now removed the mote from my own eye, and that you did in my case exactly what you did in your own--you looked only at the surface. But really, Charles, between ourselves, I begin to entertain some fears that they will at last affect Virginia with their own aristocratic notions and pretensions, for the absence of which we have so often praised her. I have seen a strange unusual something stealing over her countenance whenever I have approached her of late, which I do not like. She evidently struggles with it herself, but it has obtained the mastery in every instance, so far. Think you they will succeed at last?"