as happy
with another?

Ernest Maltravers now felt a new man: the relief of conscience operated
on the efforts of his genius. A more buoyant and elastic spirit entered
into them--they seemed to breathe as with a second youth.

Meanwhile, Cesarini threw himself into the fashionable world, and to his
own surprise was _feted_ and caressed. In fact, Castruccio was exactly
the sort of person to be made a lion of. The letters of introduction
that he had brought from Paris were addressed to those great personages
in England between whom and personages equally great in France
politics makes a bridge of connection. Cesarini appeared to them as an
accomplished young man, brother-in-law to a distinguished member of the
French Chamber. Maltravers, on the other hand, introduced him to the
literary dilettanti, who admire all authors that are not rivals. The
singular costume of Cesarini, which would have revolted persons in an
Englishman, enchanted them in an Italian. He looked, they said, like
a poet. Ladies like to have verses written to them, and Cesarini, who
talked very little, made up for it by scribbling eternally. The young
man's head soon grew filled with comparisons between himself in London
and Petrarch at Avignon. As he had always thought that fame was in the
gift of lords and ladies, and had no idea of the multitude, he fancied
himself already famous. And, since one of his strongest feelings was
his jealousy of Maltravers, he was delighted at being told he was a
much more interesting creature than that haughty personage, who wore
his neckcloth like other people, and had not even those indispensable
attributes of genius--black curls and a sneer. Fine society, which, as
Madame de Stael well says, depraves the frivolous mind and braces the
strong one, completed the ruin of all that was manly in Cesarini's
intellect. He soon learned to limit his desire of effect or distinction
to gilded saloons; and his vanity contented itself upon the scraps and
morsels from which the lion heart of true ambition turns in disdain.
But this was not all. Cesarini was envious of the greater affluence
of Maltravers. His own fortune was in a small capital of eight or nine
thousand pounds: but, thrown in the midst of the wealthiest society in
Europe, he could not bear to sacrifice a single claim upon its esteem.
He began to talk of the satiety of wealth, and young ladies listened to
him with remarkable interest when he did so--he obtained the repu