nds, and friends so intimate that they never parted.

The affection, which was merely to the indifferent nature of Maitland a
simple college episode, became to Florent the most serious, most complete
sentiment of his life. Those fraternities of election, the loveliest and
most delicate of the heart of man, usually dawn thus in youth. It is the
ideal age of passionate friendship, that period between ten and sixteen,
when the spirit is so pure, so fresh, still so virtuous, so fertile in
generous projects for the future. One dreams of a companionship almost
mystical with the friend from whom one has no secret, whose character one
sees in such a noble light, on whose esteem one depends as upon the
surest recompense, whom one innocently desires to resemble. Indeed, they
are, between the innocent lads who work side by side on a problem of
geometry or a lesson in history, veritable poems of tenderness at which
the man will smile later, finding so far different from him in all his
tastes, him whom he desired to have for a brother. It happens, however,
in certain natures of a sensibility particularly precocious and faithful
at the same time, that the awakening of effective life is so strong, so
encroaching, that the impassioned friendship persists, first through the
other awakening, that of sensuality, so fatal to all the senses of
delicacy, then through the first tumult of social experience, not less
fatal to our ideal of youth.

That was the case with Florent Chapron, whether his character, at once
somewhat wild and yet submissive, rendered him more qualified for that
renunciation of his personality than friendship demands, whether, far
from his father and his sister and not having any mother, his loving
heart had need of attaching itself to some one who could fill the place
of his relatives, or whether Maitland exercised over him a special
prestige by his opposite qualities. Fragile and somewhat delicate, was he
seduced by the strength and dexterity which his friend exhibited in all
his exercises? Timid and naturally taciturn, was he governed by the
assurance of that athlete with the loud laugh, with the invincible
energy? Did the surprising tendency toward art which the other one showed
conquer him, as well as sympathy for the misfortunes which were confided
to him and which touched him more than they touched him who experienced
them?

Gordon Maitland, Lincoln's father, of an excellent family of New York,
had been killed a