to three very distinguished students,
who were then conversing beside the corridor fire. One of these has
now his name on the back of several volumes, and his voice, I learn,
is influential in the law courts. Of the death of the second, you have
just been reading what I had to say. And the third also has escaped
out of that battle of life in which be fought so hard, it may be so
unwisely. They were all three, as I have said, notable students; but
this was the most conspicuous. Wealthy, handsome, ambitious,
adventurous, diplomatic, a reader of Balzac, and of all men that I
have known, the most like to one of Balzac's characters, he led a
life, and was attended by an ill fortune, that could be properly set
forth only in the _Comedie Humaine_. He had then his eye on
Parliament; and soon after the time of which I write, he made a showy
speech at a political dinner, was cried up to heaven next day in the
_Courant_, and the day after was dashed lower than earth with a charge
of plagiarism in the _Scotsman_. Report would have it (I daresay, very
wrongly) that he was betrayed by one in whom he particularly trusted,
and that the author of the charge had learned its truth from his own
lips. Thus, at least, he was up one day on a pinnacle, admired and
envied by all; and the next, though still but a boy, he was publicly
disgraced. The blow would have broken a less finely tempered spirit;
and even him I suppose it rendered reckless; for he took flight to
London, and there, in a fast club, disposed of the bulk of his
considerable patrimony in the space of one winter. For years
thereafter he lived I know not how; always well dressed, always in
good hotels and good society, always with empty pockets. The charm of
his manner may have stood him in good stead; but though my own manners
are very agreeable, I have never found in them a source of livelihood;
and to explain the miracle of his continued existence, I must fall
back upon the theory of the philosopher, that in his case, as in all
of the same kind, "there was a suffering relative in the background."
From this genteel eclipse he reappeared upon the scene, and presently
sought me out in the character of a generous editor. It is in this
part that I best remember him; tall, slender, with a not ungraceful
stoop; looking quite like a refined gentleman, and quite like an
urbane adventurer; smiling with an engaging ambiguity; cocking at you
one peaked eyebrow with a great appearance of fin