y as this, some nineteen years before, by the
sandy mouth of the river Vilaine, on the confines of Brittany and
Vendee had Adrian Landale been drowned; under such a sky, and under
the buffets of such an angry wind had he been recalled to life, and in
the interval, he had seen the same pictures which now, coursing back
many years in a few seconds, passed before his inward vision.

CHAPTER III

DAY DREAMS: A PHILOSOPHER'S FATE

Le beau temps de ma jeunesse ... quand j'etais si malheureux.

The borderland between adolescence and manhood, in the life of men of
refined aspirations and enthusiastic mettle, is oftener than not an
unconsciously miserable period--one which more mature years recall as
hollow, deceiving, bitterly unprofitable.

Yet there is always that about the memories of those far-off young
days, their lofty dreams long since scattered, their virgin delights
long since lost in the drudgery of earthly experience, which ever and
anon seizes the heart unawares and fills it with that infinite
weakness: that mourning for the dead and gone past, which yet is not
regret.

In the high days of the Revolutionary movement across the water,
Adrian Landale was a dreamy student living in one of those venerable
Colleges on the Cam, the very atmosphere of which would seem
sufficient to glorify the merits of past ages and past institutions.

Amidst such peaceful surroundings this eldest scion of an ancient,
north-country race--which had produced many a hardy fighter, though
never yet a thinker nor even a scholar--amid a society as prejudiced
and narrow-minded as all privileged communities are bound to become,
had nevertheless drifted resistlessly towards that unfathomable sea
whither a love for the abstract beautiful, a yearning for
super-earthly harmony and justice, must inevitably waft a young
intelligence.

As the academical years glided over him, he accumulated much classical
lore, withal read much latter-day philosophy and developed a fine
youthful, theoretical love for the new humanitarianism. He dipped
aesthetically into science, wherein he found a dim kind of help
towards a more recondite appreciation of the beauties of nature. His
was not a mind to delight in profound knowledge, but rather in
"intellectual cream."

He solaced himself with essays that would have been voted brilliant
had they dealt with things less extravagant than Universal Harmony and
Fraternal Happiness; with verses that all admitt