ent farther in their faith than the old believers, and
talked Communism, Socialism, and Saint Simonianism, with a freedom that
rose high above all the little prejudices ordinary life fosters.

If great crimes, such as shock the world by their enormity, were quite
unknown among us, all the vices practicable within the Law and the Code
Napoleon were widely popular; and the worst of it all was, none seemed
to have the remotest conception that he was not the beau-ideal of
morality. The simple fact was, we assumed a very low standard of
_right_, and chose to walk even under _that_.

With Paris and all its varied forms of life I soon became perfectly
familiar,--not merely that city which occupies the Faubourg St. Honore,
or St. Germain, not the Paris of the Boulevards or the Palais-Royal
only, but with Quartier St. Denis, the Batignolles, the Cite, and the
Pays Latin. I knew every dialect, from the slang of fashion to the
conventional language of its lowest populace. I heard every rumor,
from the cabinet of the Minister down to the latest gossip of the
"Coulisses:" what the world said and thought, in each of its varying and
dissimilar sections; how each political move was judged; what was the
public feeling for this or that measure; how the "many-headed" were
satisfied or dissatisfied, whether with the measures of the Ministry, or
the legs of the new danseuse; and thus I became the very perfection of
a feuilletoniste. There is but one secret in this species of
literature,--the ever-watchful observation of the public; and when it is
considered that this is a Parisian public, the task is not quite so easy
as some would deem it. This watchfulness, and a certain hardihood
that never shrinks from any theme, however sacred to the conventional
reserves of the general world, are all the requisites.

I have said it was a most amusing life; and if eternal excitement, if
the onward rush of new emotions, the never-ceasing flow of stimulating
thoughts, could have sufficed for happiness, I might have been, and
ought to have been, contented. Still, the whole was unreal. Not only was
the world we had made for ourselves unreal, but all our judgments, all
our speculations, our hopes, fears, anticipations, our very likings and
dislikings! Our antipathies were mock, and what we denounced with all
the pretended seriousness of heartfelt conviction in one journal, we not
unfrequently pronounced to be a heaven-sent blessing in another. Bravos
of t