d made themselves completely at home.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT.

LIAISONS DANGEREUSES--RALPH DIVETH INTO THE DILEMMA OF LOVE, AND
ADMIRETH THE FATHERLY CONDUCT OF THE PARENT OF HIS DULCINEA--YET RAGETH
AND WEEPETH THAT SHE IS A SLAVE WHO HATH ENSLAVED HIM.

At this time I had begun to look fierce, if anyone did not concede to me
the rights and privileges of a man; and especially since I had received
my bayonet wound: my vanity upon this score became insupportable.
"Younker" was now a term of bitternesss to me; on the word "lad" I
looked with sovereign contempt; "boy" I had long done with. Heartily I
prayed for a beard, but it came not; so, in order to supply the
deficiency, I used to practise looking stern before my dressing-glass.
But all my efforts at an outward semblance of manliness were vain; my
face was much too fair and feminine, though my stature, and the firmness
of my frame, were just what I wished. I was not on board the vessel
after the first week that she lay in the port of Aniana, nor did I
rejoin her until she as in the very act of sailing out of it.

How am I to approach this subject, so romantic, so delicious, and so
delicate! How can I record events, that, in proving to me that I had a
heart, first destroyed its strength by the sweet delirium of ecstasy,
and thus, having enfeebled, almost broke it! Before, the poetic ardour
had often been upon me; but the fire was lighted up at the shrine of
vanity, and I sang for applause. It was to be rekindled by love; but to
burn with a concealed fury, to be whispered only to my own soul--a
feeling too great for utterance, too intense for song, was to devour me.
I experienced ecstasies that were not happiness; I learned the bitter
truth, that rapture is not bliss.

About a week after we had obtained a quiet settlement in the town, and
very many of us a quiet settlement in the hearts, as well as in the
houses, of the beautiful Creoles and half castes; I also went on shore,
with Modesty walking steadily on my right-hand, whilst Madam Temptation
was wickedly ogling me on the left. I looked in on the establishments
of several of my brother officers, and certainly admired the rapidity
with which they had surrounded themselves with all manner of domestic
comforts, including wives, and, in some instances, large families of
children. There was much more than ready-made love in these
arrangements; anyone may buy that for ready-money; but a ready-made
progeny, a