u want for
nothing, so far as my small means go, to sustain whatever grade you
occupy. Your own conduct shall decide whether I ever desire to have any
other inheritor than the son of my oldest friend in the world.'

Such were his last words to me as I set forth, in company with a large
party, consisting for the most part of under-officers and employes
attached to the medical staff of the army. It was a very joyous and
merry fraternity, and, consisting of ingredients drawn from different
pursuits and arms of the service, infinitely amusing from contrast
of character and habits. My chief associate amongst them was a young
sous-lieutenant of dragoons, whose age, scarcely much above my own,
joined to a joyous, reckless temperament, soon pointed him out as the
character to suit me; his name was Eugene Santron. In appearance he was
slightly formed, and somewhat undersized, but with handsome features,
their animation rendered sparkling by two of the wickedest black eyes
that ever glistened and glittered in a human head. I soon saw that,
under the mask of affected fraternity and equality, he nourished the
most profound contempt for the greater number of associates, who, in
truth, were, however _braves gens_, the very roughest and least-polished
specimens of the polite nation. In all his intercourse with them, Eugene
affected the easiest tone of camaraderie and equality, never assuming
in the slightest, nor making any pretensions to the least superiority
on the score of position or acquirements, but on the whole consoling
himself, as it were, by 'playing them off' in their several
eccentricities, and rendering every trait of their vulgarity and
ignorance tributary to his own amusement. Partly from seeing that he
made me an exception to this practice, and partly from his perceiving
the amusement it afforded me, we drew closer towards each other, and
before many days elapsed, had become sworn friends.

There is probably no feature of character so very attractive to a
young man as frankness. The most artful of all flatteries is that which
addresses itself by candour, and seems at once to select, as it were by
intuition, the object most suited for a confidence. Santron carried me
by a _coup de main_ of this kind, as, taking my arm one evening as I was
strolling along the banks of the Moselle, he said--

'My dear Maurice, it's very easy to see that the society of our
excellent friends yonder is just as distasteful to you as to me.