tue of originality. When a nobleman, for no apparent reason,
announces himself the godfather of an infant fetched no man knew whence,
and thereafter cares for the lad's rearing and education, the most
unsophisticated of country folk perfectly understand the situation. And
so the good people of Gavrillac permitted themselves no illusions on the
score of the real relationship between Andre-Louis Moreau--as the lad had
been named--and Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac, who dwelt in the
big grey house that dominated from its eminence the village clustering
below.

Andre-Louis had learnt his letters at the village school, lodged the
while with old Rabouillet, the attorney, who in the capacity of fiscal
intendant, looked after the affairs of M. de Kercadiou. Thereafter, at
the age of fifteen, he had been packed off to Paris, to the Lycee of
Louis Le Grand, to study the law which he was now returned to practise
in conjunction with Rabouillet. All this at the charges of his
godfather, M. de Kercadiou, who by placing him once more under the
tutelage of Rabouillet would seem thereby quite clearly to be making
provision for his future.

Andre-Louis, on his side, had made the most of his opportunities. You
behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning enough
to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind. Out of
his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from
Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction
his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own
species. Nor can I discover that anything in his eventful life ever
afterwards caused him to waver in that opinion.

In body he was a slight wisp of a fellow, scarcely above middle height,
with a lean, astute countenance, prominent of nose and cheek-bones, and
with lank, black hair that reached almost to his shoulders. His mouth
was long, thin-lipped, and humorous. He was only just redeemed from
ugliness by the splendour of a pair of ever-questing, luminous eyes, so
dark as to be almost black. Of the whimsical quality of his mind and
his rare gift of graceful expression, his writings--unfortunately but too
scanty--and particularly his Confessions, afford us very ample evidence.
Of his gift of oratory he was hardly conscious yet, although he had
already achieved a certain fame for it in the Literary Chamber of
Rennes--one of those clubs by now ubiquitous in the land, in which the
i