he sacrificed pitilessly, however, and adopted a Brutus, as being more
revolutionary: finally, he carried an enormous club, that was his code
and digest: in like manner, De Retz used to carry a stiletto in his
pocket by way of a breviary.

"Although of different ways of thinking in politics, certain sympathies
of character and conduct united Dambergeac and myself, and we speedily
became close friends. I don't think, in the whole course of his three
years' residence, Dambergeac ever went through a single course of
lectures. For the examinations, he trusted to luck, and to his own
facility, which was prodigious: as for honors, he never aimed at them,
but was content to do exactly as little as was necessary for him to
gain his degree. In like manner he sedulously avoided those horrible
circulating libraries, where daily are seen to congregate the 'reading
men' of our schools. But, in revenge, there was not a milliner's
shop, or a lingere's, in all our quartier Latin, which he did not
industriously frequent, and of which he was not the oracle. Nay, it was
said that his victories were not confined to the left bank of the
Seine; reports did occasionally come to us of fabulous adventures by him
accomplished in the far regions of the Rue de la Paix and the Boulevard
Poissonniere. Such recitals were, for us less favored mortals, like
tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they excited our ambition, but
not our jealousy; for the superiority of Harmodius was acknowledged by
us all, and we never thought of a rivalry with him. No man ever cantered
a hack through the Champs Elysees with such elegant assurance; no man
ever made such a massacre of dolls at the shooting-gallery; or won you a
rubber at billiards with more easy grace; or thundered out a couplet out
of Beranger with such a roaring melodious bass. He was the monarch of
the Prado in winter: in summer of the Chaumiere and Mont Parnasse. Not
a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment showed a
more amiable laisser-aller in the dance--that peculiar dance at which
gendarmes think proper to blush, and which squeamish society has
banished from her salons. In a word, Harmodius was the prince of mauvais
sujets, a youth with all the accomplishments of Goettingen and Jena, and
all the eminent graces of his own country.

"Besides dissipation and gallantry, our friend had one other vast and
absorbing occupation--politics, namely; in which he was as turbulent
and enthus