a large sum
What you take for love is nothing more than desire
What human word will ever express thy slightest caress
When passion sways man, reason follows him weeping and warning
Who has told you that tears can wash away the stains of guilt
Wine suffuses the face as if to prevent shame appearing there
You believe in what is said here below and not in what is done
You play with happiness as a child plays with a rattle
You turn the leaves of dead books
Your great weapon is silence
Youth is to judge of the world from first impressions

MONSIEUR DE CAMORS

By OCTAVE FEUILLET

With a Preface by MAXIME DU CAMP, of the French Academy

OCTAVE FEUILLET

OCTAVE FEUILLET'S works abound with rare qualities, forming a harmonious
ensemble; they also exhibit great observation and knowledge of humanity,
and through all of them runs an incomparable and distinctive charm. He
will always be considered the leader of the idealistic school in the
nineteenth century. It is now fifteen years since his death, and the
judgment of posterity is that he had a great imagination, linked to great
analytical power and insight; that his style is neat, pure, and fine, and
at the same time brilliant and concise. He unites suppleness with force,
he combines grace with vigor.

Octave Feuillet was born at Saint-Lo (Manche), August 11, 1821, his
father occupying the post of Secretary-General of the Prefecture de la
Manche. Pupil at the Lycee Louis le Grand, he received many prizes, and
was entered for the law. But he became early attracted to literature, and
like many of the writers at that period attached himself to the "romantic
school." He collaborated with Alexander Dumas pere and with Paul Bocage.
It can not now be ascertained what share Feuillet may have had in any of
the countless tales of the elder Dumas. Under his own name he published
the novels 'Onesta' and 'Alix', in 1846, his first romances. He then
commenced writing for the stage. We mention 'Echec et Mat' (Odeon, 1846);
'Palma, ou la Nuit du Vendredi-Saint' (Porte St. Martin, 1847); 'La
Vieillesse de Richelieu' (Theatre Francais, 1848); 'York' (Palais Royal,
1852). Some of them are written in collaboration with Paul Bocage. They
are dramas of the Dumas type, conventional, not without cleverness, but
making no lasting mark.

Realizing this, Feuillet halted, pondered, abruptly changed front, and
began to follow in the foots