of which I will confer with
citizen Rameau. I am not satisfied with the progress made by the two
travelling missionaries who complete our Council of Ten; and though I do
not question their zeal, I think my experience may guide it if I take a
journey to the towns of Bordeaux and Marseilles, where they now are. But
should circumstances demanding concert or action arise, you may be sure
that I will either summon a meeting or transmit instructions to such
of our members as may be most usefully employed. For the present,
confreres, you are relieved. Remain only you, dear young author."

CHAPTER VII.

Left alone with Gustave Rameau, the President of the Secret Council
remained silently musing for some moments; but his countenance was no
longer moody and overcast,--his nostrils were dilated, as in triumph;
there was a half-smile of pride on his lips. Rameau watched him
curiously and admiringly. The young man had the impressionable,
excitable temperament common to Parisian genius,--especially when it
nourishes itself on absinthe. He enjoyed the romance of belonging to a
secret society; he was acute enough to recognize the sagacity by which
this small conclave was kept out of those crazed combinations for
impracticable theories more likely to lead adventurers to the Tarpeian
Rock than to the Capitol, while yet those crazed combinations might,
in some critical moment, become strong instruments in the hands of
practical ambition. Lebeau fascinated him, and took colossal proportions
in his intoxicated vision,--vision indeed intoxicated at this moment,
for before it floated the realized image of his aspirations,--a journal
of which he was to be the editor-in-chief; in which his poetry, his
prose, should occupy space as large as he pleased; through which his
name, hitherto scarce known beyond a literary clique, would resound
in salon and club and cafe, and become a familiar music on the lips of
fashion. And he owed this to the man seated there,--a prodigious man.

"Cher poete," said Lebeau, breaking silence, "it gives me no mean
pleasure to think I am opening a career to one whose talents fit him
for those goals on which they who reach write names that posterity
shall read. Struck with certain articles of yours in the journal made
celebrated by the wit and gayety of Savarin, I took pains privately to
inquire into your birth, your history, connections, antecedents. All
confirmed my first impression,--that you were exactly the