"Show off your Latin to him, Dick, my boy," said my father, before I set out: "it will give him a good opinion of your talents and erudition." I promised that I would.
Well, on being introduced to his lordship, he received me with the most affable condescension; but there was something about his affability, I thought, which made it look extremely like as if it had been assumed for the purpose of showing how a great man could descend.
"Glad to see you, young man," he said. "I hope you and I shall get on well together. But there was just one single question regarding you, which I quite forgot to put to your father. Do you understand Latin thoroughly?--that is, can you translate it readily?"
Feeling my own strength on this point, and delighted that he had afforded me so early an opportunity of declaring it, I replied, with a degree of exultation which I had some difficulty in repressing--"I flatter myself, my lord, that you will not find me deficient in that particular. I understand Latin very well, and will readily undertake to translate anything in that language which may be presented to me."
"In that case," replied his lordship, gravely, "I am sorry to say, young man, you will not suit me."
"How, my lord!" said I, with a look of mingled amazement and disappointment--"because I understand Latin? I should have thought that a recommendation to your lordship's service."
"Quite otherwise, sir," replied his lordship, coolly. "It may appear to you, indeed, sir, rather an odd ground of disqualification. But the thing is easily explained. I have often occasion, sir," he went on, with increasing dignity, "to write on matters of importance to my friends in the cabinet; and, when I have anything of a very particular nature to say, I always write my sentiments in Latin. It would therefore, sir, be imprudent of me to employ any one in transcribing such letters, who is conversant with the language alluded to; or, indeed, otherwise exposing them to the eye of such a person. You will, therefore, young man," continued the peer--now rising from his seat, as if with a desire that I should take the movement as a hint that he wished the interview to terminate--"present my respects to your father, and say that I am very sorry for this affair--very sorry, indeed."