man. He showed
them in confidence the verses that he had written to her, and his brow
would darken, his eyes roll, his chest heave with emotion as he recalled
that fatal period of his life, and described the woes and agonies which
he had suffered. The verses were copied out, handed about, sneered at,
admired, passed from coterie to coterie. There are few things which
elevate a lad in the estimation of his brother boys, more than to have
a character for a great and romantic passion. Perhaps there is something
noble in it at all times--among very young men it is considered
heroic--Pen was pronounced a tremendous fellow. They said he had almost
committed suicide: that he had fought a duel with a baronet about her.
Freshmen pointed him out to each other. As at the promenade time at two
o'clock he swaggered out of college, surrounded by his cronies, he was
famous to behold. He was elaborately attired. He would ogle the ladies
who came to lionise the university, and passed before him on the arms
of happy gownsmen, and give his opinion upon their personal charms, or
their toilettes, with the gravity of a critic whose experience entitled
him to speak with authority. Men used to say that they had been walking
with Pendennis, and were as pleased to be seen in his company as some of
us would be if we walked with a duke down Pall Mall. He and the Proctor
capped each other as they met, as if they were rival powers, and the men
hardly knew which was the greater.

In fact, in the course of his second year, Arthur Pendennis had become
one of the men of fashion in the university. It is curious to watch
that facile admiration, and simple fidelity of youth. They hang round
a leader; and wonder at him, and love him, and imitate him. No
generous boy ever lived, I suppose, that has not had some wonderment of
admiration for another boy; and Monsieur Pen at Oxbridge had his school,
his faithful band of friends and his rivals. When the young men heard
at the haberdashers' shops that Mr. Pendennis, of Boniface, had just
ordered a crimson satin-cravat, you would see a couple of dozen crimson
satin cravats in Main Street in the course of the week--and Simon, the
Jeweller, was known to sell no less than two gross of Pendennis pins,
from a pattern which the young gentleman had selected in his shop.

Now if any person with an arithmetical turn of mind will take the
trouble to calculate what a sum of money it would cost a young man to
indulge freely