d absurdly sensitive, who made his appearance
on the lawn of the peaceful English college on an autumn morning, brought
with him a self-love already bleeding, to whom it was a delightful
surprise to find himself among comrades of his age who did not even seem
to suspect that any difference separated them from him. It required the
perception of a Yankee to discern, beneath the nails of the handsome boy
with the dark complexion, the tiny drops of negro blood, so far removed.
Between an octoroon and a creole a European can never tell the
difference. Florent had been represented as what he really was, the
grandson of one of the Emperor's best officers. His father had taken
particular pains to designate him as French, and his companions only saw
in him a pupil like themselves, coming from Alabama--that is to say, from
a country almost as chimerical as Japan or China.

All who in early youth have known the torture of apprehension will be
able to judge of the poor child's agony when, after four months of a life
amid the warmth of sympathy, one of the Jesuit fathers who directed the
college announced to him, thinking it would afford him pleasure, the
expected arrival of an American, of young Lincoln Maitland. This was to
Florent so violent a shock that he had a fever for forty-eight hours. In
after years he could remember what thoughts possessed him on the day when
he descended from his room to the common refectory, sure that as soon as
he was brought face to face with the new pupil he would have to sustain
the disdainful glance suffered so frequently in the United States. There
was no doubt in his mind that, his origin once discovered, the atmosphere
of kindness in which he moved with so much surprise would soon be changed
to hostility. He could again see himself crossing the yard; could hear
himself called by Father Roberts--the master who had told him of the
expected new arrival--and his surprise when Lincoln Maitland had given
him the hearty handshake of one demi-compatriot who meets another. He was
to learn later that that reception was quite natural, coming from the son
of an Englishman, educated altogether by his mother, and taken from New
York to Europe before his fifth year, there to live in a circle as little
American as possible. Chapron did not reason in that manner. He had an
infinitely tender heart. Gratitude entered it--gratitude as impassioned
as had been his fear. One week later Lincoln Maitland and he were
frie