their mother had
before them.

While Louis de Camors was learning rapidly, by the association and
example of the collateral branches of his family, to defy equally all
principles and all convictions, his terrible father finished the task.

Worldling to the last extreme, depraved to his very core; past-master in
the art of Parisian high life; an unbridled egotist, thinking himself
superior to everything because he abased everything to himself; and,
finally, flattering himself for despising all duties, which he had all
his life prided himself on dispensing with--such was his father. But for
all this, he was the pride of his circle, with a pleasing presence and an
indefinable charm of manner.

The father and son saw little of each other. M. de Camors was too proud
to entangle his son in his own debaucheries; but the course of every-day
life sometimes brought them together at meal-time. He would then listen
with cool mockery to the enthusiastic or despondent speeches of the
youth. He never deigned to argue seriously, but responded in a few bitter
words, that fell like drops of sleet on the few sparks still glowing in
the son's heart.

Becoming gradually discouraged, the latter lost all taste for work, and
gave himself up, more and more, to the idle pleasures of his position.
Abandoning himself wholly to these, he threw into them all the seductions
of his person, all the generosity of his character--but at the same time
a sadness always gloomy, sometimes desperate.

The bitter malice he displayed, however, did not prevent his being loved
by women and renowned among men. And the latter imitated him.

He aided materially in founding a charming school of youth without
smiles. His air of ennui and lassitude, which with him at least had the
excuse of a serious foundation, was servilely copied by the youth around
him, who never knew any greater distress than an overloaded stomach, but
whom it pleased, nevertheless, to appear faded in their flower and
contemptuous of human nature.

We have seen Camors in this phase of his existence. But in reality
nothing was more foreign to him than the mask of careless disdain that
the young man assumed. Upon falling into the common ditch, he, perhaps,
had one advantage over his fellows: he did not make his bed with base
resignation; he tried persistently to raise himself from it by a violent
struggle, only to be hurled upon it once more.

Strong souls do not sleep easily: indifference w