aunched into a career, of all others the most amusing, the
most exciting, and, I must also add, the most dissipated. Living apart
from all mankind in a little circle of our own, where we only recognized
the world as we ourselves were pleased to paint it, our whole lives were
one long scoff and sneer at everybody and everything. Friendship meant
the habit of meeting at dinner; the highest nobility of soul was his who
paid the reckoning.

If there was little actual happiness among us, there was certainly no
care nor any touch of sorrow. A great picture condemned, a poem cut to
pieces, a play hissed off, only suggested a "souper de consolation,"
when the unlucky author would be the first to cut jokes upon his own
failure, and ridicule the offspring of his own brains. Who could look
for sympathy where men had no feeling for themselves? Even thieves, the
proverb tells us, observe "honor" with each other; but we were worse
than thieves, since we actually lived and grew fat upon each other's
mishaps. If one exhibited a statue at the Louvre, another was sure to
caricature it for the Passage de l'Opera. If one brought out a grand
drama at the Francais, a burlesque was certain to follow it at the
Palais-Royal. Every little trait that near intercourse and familiarity
discloses, every weakness that is laid bare in the freedom of friendly
association, were made venal, and worth so much a line for "Le Voleur"
or "L'Espion."

As to any sulking, or dreaming of resenting these infractions, he might
as well try to repress the free-and-easy habits of a midshipman's berth.
They were the "masonry of the craft," which each tacitly subscribed to
when he entered it.

All intercourse was completely gladiatorial, not for display, but for
defence. Everlasting badinage on every subject and on everybody was the
order of each day; and as success was to the full as much quizzed
as failure, any exhibition of vanity or self-gratulation met a heavy
retribution. Woe unto him whose romance went through three editions in
a fortnight, or whom the audience called for at the conclusion of his
drama!

As for the fairer portion of our guild, being for the most part
ostracized in general society, they bore a grudge against their sex,
and affected a thousand airs of mannishuess. Some always dressed in male
attire; many sported little moustaches and chin-tufts, rode man-fashion
in the Bois de Boulogne, fought duels; and all smoked. Like other
converts, they w