lege. He was as gloomy as a death's-head at
parties, which he avoided of his own part, or to which his young friends
soon ceased to invite him. Everybody knew that Pendennis was "hard up."
That man Bloundell, who could pay nobody, and who was obliged to go down
after three terms, was his ruin, the men said. His melancholy figure
might be seen shirking about the lonely quadrangles in his battered old
cap and torn gown, and he who had been the pride of the university but
a year before, the man whom all the young ones loved to look at, was now
the object of conversation at freshmen's wine-parties, and they spoke of
him with wonder and awe.

At last came the Degree Examinations. Many a young man of his year
whose hob-nailed shoes Pen had derided, and whose face or coat he
had caricatured--many a man whom he had treated with scorn in the
lecture-room or crushed with his eloquence in the debating-club--many
of his own set who had not half his brains, but a little regularity and
constancy of occupation, took high places in the honours or passed with
decent credit. And where in the list was Pen the superb, Pen the wit and
dandy, Pen the poet and orator? Ah, where was Pen the widow's darling
and sole pride? Let us hide our heads, and shut up the page. The lists
came out; and a dreadful rumour rushed through the university, that
Pendennis of Boniface was plucked.

CHAPTER XXI. Flight after Defeat

Everybody who has the least knowledge of Heraldry and the Peerage must
be aware that the noble family of which, as we know, Helen Pendennis was
a member, bears for a crest, a nest full of little pelicans pecking at
the ensanguined bosom of a big maternal bird, which plentifully supplies
the little wretches with the nutriment on which, according to the
heraldic legend, they are supposed to be brought up. Very likely female
pelicans like so to bleed under the selfish little beaks of their young
ones: it is certain that women do. There must be some sort of pleasure,
which we men don't understand, which accompanies the pain of being
scarified, and indeed I believe some women would rather actually so
suffer than not. They like sacrificing themselves in behalf of the
object which their instinct teaches them to love. Be it for a reckless
husband, a dissipated son, a darling scapegrace of a brother, how ready
their hearts are to pour out their best treasures for the benefit of the
cherished person; and what a deal of this sort of enjo