compose an opera in three acts, The Chaste Suzannah,
music by Meyerbeer?"

"I should like some supper first. Madame Gobillot, I beseech you, give
me something to eat. Thanks to your mountain air, I am almost starved."

"But, Monsieur, we have been waiting two hours for you," retorted the
landlady, as she made each stewpan dance in succession.

"That is a fact," said the artist; "let us go into the dining-room,
then.

"Gia la mensa a preparata."

"While supping, I will explain my plans to you. I have just found a
Daniel in the ashes--"

"My dear Marillac, drop your Daniel and Suzannah," replied Gerfaut, as
he sat down to the table; "I have something much more important to talk
to you about."

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER VI. GERFAUT'S STORY

While the two friends are devouring to the very last morsel the feast
prepared for them by Madame Gobillot, it may not be out of place to
explain in a few words the nature of the bonds that united these two
men.

The Vicomte de Gerfaut was one of those talented beings who are the
veritable champions of an age when the lightest pen weighs more in the
social balance than our ancestors' heaviest sword. He was born in
the south of France, of one of those old families whose fortune had
diminished each generation, their name finally being almost all that
they had left. After making many sacrifices to give their son an
education worthy of his birth, his parents did not live to enjoy the
fruits of their efforts, and Gerfaut became an orphan at the time when
he had just finished his law studies. He then abandoned the career of
which his father had dreamed for him, and the possibilities of a red
gown bordered with ermine. A mobile and highly colored imagination,
a passionate love for the arts, and, more than all, some intimacies
contracted with men of letters, decided his vocation and launched him
into literature.

The ardent young man, without a murmur or any misgivings, drank to
the very dregs the cup poured out to neophytes in the harsh career of
letters by editors, theatrical managers, and publishers. With some,
this course ends in suicide, but it only cost Gerfaut a portion of his
slender patrimony; he bore this loss like a man who feels that he is
strong enough to repair it. When his plans were once made, he followed
them up with indefatigable perseverance, and became a striking example
of the irresistible power of intelligence united to will-power.
Reputation,