mention of a serious affection, and
turns up his nose at a love-match. He thinks young women no end of fun;
his vanity makes him fancy himself the heartless hero of many an
adventure, and if, as frequently happens, he is but an imperfect
gentleman, he will not scruple to devise, imagine, and recount (to his
bosom friend, of course, in strictest secrecy) some hairbreadth escape
from an irate husband or an avenging father, where he has nearly lost
his life, he says, in the pursuit of some woman, generally a lady of
spotless reputation whom he barely knows. But put him in her society for
an hour, with every opportunity of pressing his suit, and the veriest
lambkin could not be more harmless. He has not yet tasted blood, though
he will often smack his lips and talk as if he had.

It is generally chance that makes him fall in love the first time. He is
thrown together with his fate--tall or short, dark or fair, it makes no
difference--in some country house or on some journey. For a long time
her society only amuses him and helps to pass the hours, for Boreas is
easily bored and finds time a terrible adversary. Gradually he
understands that she is a necessity to his comfort, and there is nothing
he will not do to secure her on every possible opportunity for himself.
Then perhaps he allows to himself that he really does care a little, and
he loses some of his incrustation of vanity. He feels less sure of
himself, and his companions observe that he ceases to talk of his
alleged good fortunes. Very, very slowly his real heart wakes up, and
whatever is manly and serious and gentle in his nature comes
unconsciously to the surface. Henceforth he knows he loves, and because
his love has been slow to develop itself it is not necessarily sluggish
or deficient when once it is come. But Englishmen are rarely heroic
lovers except in their novels. There is generally a little bypath of
caution, a postern gate of mercantile foresight, by which they can slip
quietly out at the right moment and forget all about the whole thing.

Claudius was not an Englishman, but a Scandinavian, and he differed from
the imaginary young man described above in that he had a great broad
reverence of woman and for woman's love. But it was all a theory, of
which the practice to him was as yet unknown. He had soon wearied of the
class of women he had met in his student-life--chiefly the daughters of
respectable Heidelberg Philistines, of various degrees of south