mple words. They came at the
moment when I most needed them--when I had almost lost my taste for
society, and was sliding day by day into habits of more confirmed
idleness and Bohemianism. They roused me. They made a man of me. They
recalled me to higher aims, "purer manners, nobler laws." They clothed
me, so to speak, in the _toga virilis_ of a generous devotion. They made
me long to prove myself "_sans peur_," to merit the "_sans reproche."_
They marked an era in my life never to be forgotten or effaced.

Let it not be thought for one moment that I loved her--or fancied I
loved her. No, not so far as one heart-beat would carry me; but I was
proud to possess her confidence and her friendship. Was she not
Dalrymple's wife, and had not he asked me to watch over and protect her?
Nay, had she not called me her knight and accepted my fealty?

Nothing perhaps, is so invaluable to a young man on entering life as the
friendship of a pure-minded and highly-cultivated woman who, removed too
far above him to be regarded with passion, is yet beautiful enough to
engage his admiration; whose good opinion becomes the measure of his own
self-respect; and whose confidence is a sacred trust only to be parted
from with loss of life or honor.

Such an influence upon myself at this time was the friendship of Madame
de Courcelles. I went out from her presence that morning morally
stronger than before, and at each repetition of my visit I found her
influence strengthen and increase. Sometimes I met Monsieur de Caylus,
on which occasions my stay was ever of the briefest; but I most
frequently found her alone, and then our talk was of books, of art, of
culture, of all those high and stirring things that alike move the
sympathies of the educated woman and rouse the enthusiasm of the young
man. She became interested in me; at first for Dalrymple's sake, and
by-and-by, however little I deserved it, for my own--and she showed
that interest in many ways inexpressibly valuable to me then and
thenceforth. She took pains to educate my taste; opened to me hitherto
unknown avenues of study; led me to explore "fresh fields and pastures
new," to which, but for her help, I might not have found my way for many
a year to come. My reading, till now, had been almost wholly English or
classical; she sent me to the old French literature--to the _Chansons de
Geste_; to the metrical romances of the Trouveres; to the Chronicles of
Froissart, Monstrelet, and Phili