them away broadcast. The first, on the faith of a hope,
devote themselves without conviction to a system which has wind and tide
against it, but they leap upon another political craft when the first
goes adrift; the second take the measure of the future, sound it, and
see in political fidelity what the English see in commercial integrity,
an element of success. Where the young man of possessions makes a pun or
an epigram upon the restoration of the throne, he who has nothing makes
a public calculation or a secret reservation, and obtains everything by
giving a handshake to his friends. The one deny every faculty to others,
look upon all their ideas as new, as though the world had been made
yesterday, they have unlimited confidence in themselves, and no crueler
enemy than those same selves. But the others are armed with an incessant
distrust of men, whom they estimate at their value, and are sufficiently
profound to have one thought beyond their friends, whom they exploit;
then of evenings, when they lay their heads on their pillows, they weigh
men as a miser weighs his gold pieces. The one are vexed at an aimless
impertinence, and allow themselves to be ridiculed by the diplomatic,
who make them dance for them by pulling what is the main string of these
puppets--their vanity. Thus, a day comes when those who had nothing have
something, and those who had something have nothing. The latter look
at their comrades who have achieved positions as cunning fellows; their
hearts may be bad, but their heads are strong. "He is very strong!" is
the supreme praise accorded to those who have attained _quibuscumque
viis_, political rank, a woman, or a fortune. Amongst them are to be
found certain young men who play this _role_ by commencing with having
debts. Naturally, these are more dangerous than those who play it
without a farthing.

The young man who called himself a friend of Henri de Marsay was a
rattle-head who had come from the provinces, and whom the young men then
in fashion were teaching the art of running through an inheritance;
but he had one last leg to stand on in his province, in the shape of a
secure establishment. He was simply an heir who had passed without any
transition from his pittance of a hundred francs a month to the entire
paternal fortune, and who, if he had not wit enough to perceive that he
was laughed at, was sufficiently cautious to stop short at two-thirds
of his capital. He had learned at Paris, for