bout."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Evident that the man was above his costume; a rare thing!
Mania for fearing that she may be compromised
Material in you to make one of Cooper's redskins
Recourse to concessions is often as fatal to women as to kings
Those whom they most amuse are those who are best worth amusing
Trying to conceal by a smile (a blush)
When one speaks of the devil he appears
Wiped his nose behind his hat, like a well-bred orator

GERFAUT

By CHARLES DE BERNARD

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER VI

GERFAUT'S STORY

While the two friends are devouring to the very last morsel the feast
prepared for them by Madame Gobillot, it may not be out of place to
explain in a few words the nature of the bonds that united these two men.

The Vicomte de Gerfaut was one of those talented beings who are the
veritable champions of an age when the lightest pen weighs more in the
social balance than our ancestors' heaviest sword. He was born in the
south of France, of one of those old families whose fortune had
diminished each generation, their name finally being almost all that they
had left. After making many sacrifices to give their son an education
worthy of his birth, his parents did not live to enjoy the fruits of
their efforts, and Gerfaut became an orphan at the time when he had just
finished his law studies. He then abandoned the career of which his
father had dreamed for him, and the possibilities of a red gown bordered
with ermine. A mobile and highly colored imagination, a passionate love
for the arts, and, more than all, some intimacies contracted with men of
letters, decided his vocation and launched him into literature.

The ardent young man, without a murmur or any misgivings, drank to the
very dregs the cup poured out to neophytes in the harsh career of letters
by editors, theatrical managers, and publishers. With some, this course
ends in suicide, but it only cost Gerfaut a portion of his slender
patrimony; he bore this loss like a man who feels that he is strong
enough to repair it. When his plans were once made, he followed them up
with indefatigable perseverance, and became a striking example of the
irresistible power of intelligence united to will-power. Reputation, for
him, lay in the unknown depths of an arid and rocky soil; he was obliged,
in order to reach it, to dig a sort of artesian well. Gerfaut accepted
this heroic labor; he worked da