soned Napoleon! So, instead of
teaching the son to love and revere his father, the Frenchman shrugged
his shoulders when the boy broke into some unfilial complaint, and at
most said, "Mais, cher enfant, ton pere est Anglais,--c'est tout dire."
Meanwhile, as the child sprang rapidly into precocious youth, he was
permitted a liberty in his hours of leisure of which he availed himself
with all the zest of his earlier habits and adventurous temper. He
formed acquaintances among the loose young haunters of cafes and
spendthrifts of that capital,--the wits! He became an excellent
swordsman and pistol-shot, adroit in all games in which skill helps
fortune. He learned betimes to furnish himself with money, by the cards
and the billiard-balls.

But delighted with the easy home he had obtained, he took care to school
his features and smooth his manner in his father's visits, to make the
most of what he had learned of less ignoble knowledge, and, with his
characteristic imitativeness, to cite the finest sentiments he had found
in his plays; and novels. What father is not credulous? Roland believed,
and wept tears of joy. And now he thought the time was come to take back
the boy,--to return with a worthy heir to the old Tower. He thanked and
blessed the tutor; he took the son. But under pretence that he had
yet some things to master, whether in book knowledge or manly
accomplishments, the youth begged his father at all events not yet to
return to England,--to let him attend his tutor daily for some months.
Roland consented, moved from his old quarters, and took a lodging for
both in the same suburb as that in which the teacher resided. But
soon, when they were under one roof, the boy's habitual tastes, and his
repugnance to all paternal authority, were betrayed. To do my unhappy
cousin justice (such as that justice is), though he had the cunning
for a short disguise, he had not the hypocrisy to maintain systematic
deceit. He could play a part for a while, from an exulting joy in
his own address; but he could not wear a mask with the patience of
cold-blooded dissimulation. Why enter into painful details, so easily
divined by the intelligent reader? The faults of the son were precisely
those to which Roland would be least indulgent. To the ordinary scrapes
of high-spirited boyhood no father, I am sure, would have been more
lenient; but to anything that seemed low, petty,--that grated on him as
a gentleman and soldier,--there, not for