es, contrasted strongly with the meagre fare of which
Gustave's parents had deemed themselves fortunate to partake at the
board of his betrothed; remnants of those viands which offered to
the inquisitive epicure an experiment in food much too costly for the
popular stomach--dainty morsels of elephant, hippopotamus, and wolf,
interspersed with half-emptied bottles of varied and high-priced
wines. Passing these evidences of unseasonable extravagance with a mute
sentiment of anger and disgust, Madame Rameau penetrated into a small
cabinet, the door of which was also ajar, and saw her son stretched
on his bed half dressed, breathing heavily in the sleep which follows
intoxication. She did not attempt to disturb him. She placed herself
quietly by his side, gazing mournfully on the face which she had once so
proudly contemplated, now haggard and faded,--still strangely beautiful,
though it was the beauty of ruin.

From time to time he stirred uneasily, and muttered broken words, in
which fragments of his own delicately-worded verse were incoherently
mixed up with ribald slang, addressed to imaginary companions. In
his dreams he was evidently living over again his late revel, with
episodical diversions into the poet-world, of which he was rather a
vagrant nomad than a settled cultivator. Then she would silently
bathe his feverish temples with the perfumed water she found on his
dressing-table. And so she watched till, in the middle of the night,
he woke up, and recovered the possession of his reason with a quickness
that surprised Madame Rameau. He was, indeed, one of those men in whom
excess of drink, when slept off, is succeeded by extreme mildness, the
effect of nervous exhaustion, and by a dejected repentance, which, to
his mother, seemed a propitious lucidity of the moral sense.

Certainly on seeing her he threw himself on her breast, and began to
shed tears. Madame Rameau had not the heart to reproach him sternly. But
by gentle degrees she made him comprehend the pain he had given to his
father, and the destitution in which he had deserted his parents and
his affianced. In his present mood Gustave was deeply affected by these
representations. He excused himself feebly by dwelling on the excitement
of the times, the preoccupation of his mind, the example of his
companions; but with his excuses he mingled passionate expressions of
remorse, and before daybreak mother and son were completely reconciled.
Then he fell into a