ecede and follow this duel; his calmness, his courage, the mixture of
humor and wit with which he ever was wont to meet the greatest perils,
and which was one of the characteristics of his nature, and, above all,
that great and noble generosity of which he gave so many proofs in every
circumstance and at every period of his life. Then followed the
consequences of the duel, and the capital derived from it by the
accumulated stupidity and revenge of those inferior persons jealous of
his superiority and of his popular fame.

Nothing is so beautiful, however, as the scene which takes place first
at the club and then at the House of Lords, where Mr. Disraeli shows
this noble and calumniated creature the object of the base and
hypocritical jealousy of most of his colleagues, who, notwithstanding
their hatred for him, were wont to call themselves his friends; when,
exhausted and almost the victim of a ferocious hatred of an excited
populace, he stands calm in the midst of these truly English elements in
the attitude of an archangel or of a demi-god, opposing them and
maintaining his ground until with the aid of a few brave and faithful
friends, of the constable's truncheon, and the arrival of the mounted
guard, he succeeds in getting rid of them altogether. All this, although
not quite true, either as a historical fact or in its details, is,
however, so admirably told, that it may be taken as a document well
worthy of consideration by the biographer, and of which extracts can not
be given without spoiling the whole.

In the midst of the turmoil occasioned by this duel, in which his
adversary had been seriously wounded, Cadurcis suddenly finds himself
abandoned by those who called themselves his friends, calumniated by the
press, who spare no falsehoods to disparage his character, but whose
contradictions have no effect in his great successes. Cadurcis, gifted
as he is with an extreme sensibility, and accustomed to live in an
atmosphere of praise, finds himself suddenly nailed to the pillory of
public indignation, sees his writings, his habits, his character, and
his person, equally censured, ridiculed, and blemished; in fact, he
finds himself the victim of reaction, and yet all this does not affect
his mind; his true agony is caused not by the regret at losing his
prestige and his popularity, nor by the conduct of those who style
themselves his friends, and who now joined his enemies in spreading and
believing in the false re