our
with his pupil, and of making him forget Murphy, by his own concession
and compliance, he concealed from the Grand Duke the young prince's
repugnance for study, and boasted of his application to, and rapid
progress in, his studies; whilst some examinations arranged between
himself and Rodolph, which had the air of being impromptu questions,
confirmed the Grand Duke in his blind and implicit confidence. By
degrees the dislike which Rodolph at first entertained for the doctor
changed, on the young prince's part, into a cool familiarity, very
unlike the real attachment he had for Murphy. By degrees, he found
himself leagued with Polidori (although from very innocent causes) by
the same ties that unite two guilty persons. Sooner or later, Rodolph
was sure to despise a man of the age and character of the doctor, who so
unworthily lied to excuse the idleness of his pupil. This Polidori knew;
but he also knew that if we do not at once sever our connections with
corrupt minds in disgust, by degrees, and in spite of our better reason,
we become familiar with and too frequently admire them, until,
insensibly, we hear without shame or reproach those things mocked at and
vituperated which we formerly loved and revered. Besides, the doctor
was too cunning all at once to shock certain noble sentiments and
convictions which Rodolph had derived from the admirable lessons of
Murphy. After having vented much raillery on the coarseness of the early
occupations of his young pupil, the doctor, laying aside his thin mask
of austerity, had greatly aroused the curiosity and heated the fancy of
the young prince, by the exaggerated descriptions, strongly drawn and
deeply coloured, of the pleasures and gallantries which had illustrated
the reigns of Louis XIV., the Regent, and especially Louis XV., the hero
of Cesar Polidori. He assured the misled boy, who listened to him with a
fatal earnestness, that pleasures, however excessive, far from
demoralising a highly accomplished prince, often made him merciful and
generous, inasmuch as fine minds are never more predisposed to
benevolence and clemency than when acted upon by their own enjoyments.
Louis XV., the _bien aime_, the well-beloved, was an unanswerable proof
of this. And then, added the doctor, how entirely have the greatest men
of all ages and all countries abandoned themselves to the most refined
epicureanism,--from Alcibiades to Maurice of Saxony, from Anthony to the
great Conde, from C