atisfied with his quondam
pupil's course of life and progressive reputation to trouble him with
exhortation or advice. Cesarini had grown a literary lion, whose genius
was vehemently lauded by all the reviews--on the same principle as that
which induces us to praise foreign singers or dead men;--we must praise
something, and we don't like to praise those who jostle ourselves.
Cesarini had therefore grown prodigiously conceited--swore that England
was the only country for true merit; and no longer concealed his jealous
anger at the wider celebrity of Maltravers. Ernest saw him squandering
away his substance, and prostituting his talents to drawing-room
trifles, with a compassionate sigh. He sought to warn him, but Cesarini
listened to him with such impatience that he resigned the office of
monitor. He wrote to De Montaigne, who succeeded no better. Cesarini was
bent on playing his own game. And to one game, without a metaphor, he
had at last come. His craving for excitement vented itself at Hazard,
and his remaining guineas melted daily away.

But De Montaigne's letters to Maltravers consoled him for the loss of
less congenial friends. The Frenchman was now an eminent and celebrated
man; and his appreciation of Maltravers was sweeter to the latter than
would have been the huzzas of crowds. But, all this while, his vanity
was pleased and his curiosity roused by the continued correspondence of
his unseen Egeria. That correspondence (if so it may be called, being
all on one side) had now gone on for a considerable time, and he
was still wholly unable to discover the author: its tone had of late
altered--it had become more sad and subdued--it spoke of the hollowness
as well as the rewards of fame; and, with a touch of true womanly
sentiment, often hinted more at the rapture of soothing dejection,
than of sharing triumph. In all these letters, there was the undeniable
evidence of high intellect and deep feeling; they excited a strong and
keen interest in Maltravers, yet the interest was not that which made
him wish to discover, in order that he might love, the writer. They
were for the most part too full of the irony and bitterness of a man's
spirit, to fascinate one who considered that gentleness was the essence
of a woman's strength. Temper spoke in them, no less than mind and
heart, and it was not the sort of temper which a man who loves women to
be womanly could admire.

"I hear you often spoken of" (ran one of these str