han the intelligence of my
own. Characters of my order experience a balm-like solace in the contact
of such souls as animated the honest breast of Victor Vandenhuten.

The next fortnight was a period of many alternations; my existence
during its lapse resembled a sky of one of those autumnal nights which
are specially haunted by meteors and falling stars. Hopes and fears,
expectations and disappointments, descended in glancing showers from
zenith to horizon; but all were transient, and darkness followed swift
each vanishing apparition. M. Vandenhuten aided me faithfully; he set me
on the track of several places, and himself made efforts to secure
them for me; but for a long time solicitation and recommendation were
vain--the door either shut in my face when I was about to walk in,
or another candidate, entering before me, rendered my further advance
useless. Feverish and roused, no disappointment arrested me; defeat
following fast on defeat served as stimulants to will. I forgot
fastidiousness, conquered reserve, thrust pride from me: I asked, I
persevered, I remonstrated, I dunned. It is so that openings are forced
into the guarded circle where Fortune sits dealing favours round. My
perseverance made me known; my importunity made me remarked. I was
inquired about; my former pupils' parents, gathering the reports of
their children, heard me spoken of as talented, and they echoed the
word: the sound, bandied about at random, came at last to ears which,
but for its universality, it might never have reached; and at the very
crisis when I had tried my last effort and knew not what to do, Fortune
looked in at me one morning, as I sat in drear and almost desperate
deliberation on my bedstead, nodded with the familiarity of an old
acquaintance--though God knows I had never met her before--and threw a
prize into my lap.

In the second week of October, 18--, I got the appointment of English
professor to all the classes of ---- College, Brussels, with a salary
of three thousand francs per annum; and the certainty of being able, by
dint of the reputation and publicity accompanying the position, to make
as much more by private means. The official notice, which communicated
this information, mentioned also that it was the strong recommendation
of M. Vandenhuten, negociant, which had turned the scale of choice in my
favour.

No sooner had I read the announcement than I hurried to M. Vandenhuten's
bureau, pushed the document under