cle and I! That is how I have
broken with the only relative I possess. It is now ten days since then.
I now have five left in which to mend the broken thread of the family
tradition, and become a lawyer. But nothing points to such conversion.
On the contrary, I feel relieved of a heavy weight, pleased to be free,
to have no profession. I feel the thrill of pleasure that a fugitive
from justice feels on clearing the frontier. Perhaps I was meant for a
different course of life than the one I was forced to follow. As a child
I was brought up to worship the Mouillard practice, with the fixed idea
that this profession alone could suit me; heir apparent to a lawyer's
stool--born to it, brought up to it, without any idea, at any rate for a
long time, that I could possibly free myself from the traditions of the
law's sacred jargon.

I have quite got over that now. The courts, where I have been a frequent
spectator, seem to me full of talented men who fine down and belittle
their talents in the practice of law. Nothing uses up the nobler
virtues more quickly than a practice at the bar. Generosity, enthusiasm,
sensibility, true and ready sympathy--all are taken, leaving the man,
in many instances nothing but a skilful actor, who apes all the emotions
while feeling none. And the comedy is none the less repugnant to me
because it is played through with a solemn face, and the actors are
richly recompensed.

Lampron is not like this. He has given play to all the noble qualities
of his nature. I envy him. I admire his disinterestedness, his broad
views of life, his faith in good in spite of evil, his belief in poetry
in spite of prose, his unspoiled capacity for receiving new impressions
and illusions--a capacity which, amid the crowds that grow old in mind
before they are old in body, keeps him still young and boyish. I think
I might have been devoted to his profession, or to literature, or to
anything but law.

We shall see. For the present I have taken a plunge into the unknown. My
time is all my own, my freedom is absolute, and I am enjoying it.

I have hidden nothing from Lampron. As my friend he is pleased, I can
see, at a resolve which keeps me in Paris; but his prudence cries out
upon it.

"It is easy enough to refuse a profession," he said; "harder to find
another in its place. What do you intend to do?"

"I don't know."

"My dear fellow, you seem to be trusting to luck. At sixteen that might
be permissible, at twent