ou ever find Moliere dull? or Lamb prosy? or Scott
unentertaining?"

"You remind me," said I, laughing, "of the student in Chaucer, who
desired for his only pleasure and society,

"'---at his bedde's head
A'twenty bokes clothed in black and red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy!'"

"Ay," replied my new acquaintance, "but he preferred them expressly to
'robes riche, or fidel or sautrie,' whereas, I prefer them to men and
women, and to Aristotle and his philosophy, into the bargain!"

"Your own philosophy, at least, is admirable," said I. "For many a
year--I might almost say for most years of my life--I have been a
disciple in the same school."

"Sir, you cannot belong to a better. Think of the convenience of always
carrying half a dozen intimate friends in your pocket! Good-afternoon."

We had now come to a point where two paths diverged, and the reading
traveller, always economical of time, opened his book where he had last
turned down the leaf, and disappeared round the corner.

I never saw him again; but his theory amused me, and, as trifles will
sometimes do even in the gravest matters, decided me. So the result of
all my hopes and reflections was, that I went back to England and to the
student life that had been the dream of my youth.

CHAPTER LV.

MY BIRTHDAY.

Three years of foreign travel, and five of retirement at home, brought
my twenty-ninth birthday. I was still young, it is true; but how changed
from that prime of early manhood when I used to play Romeo at midnight
to Hortense upon her balcony! I looked at myself in the glass that
morning, and contemplated the wearied, bronzed, and bearded face which

"...seared by toil and something touched by time,"

now gave me back glance for glance. I looked older than my age by many
years. My eyes had grown grave with a steadfast melancholy, and streaks
of premature silver gleamed here and there in the still abundant hair
which had been the solitary vanity of my youth.

"Is she also thus changed and faded?" I asked myself, as I turned away.
And then I sighed to think that if we met she might not know me.

For I loved her still; worshipped her; raised altars to her in the dusky
chambers of my memory. My whole life was dedicated to her. My best
thoughts were hers. My poems, my ambition, my hours of labor, all were
hers only! I knew now that no time could change the love which had so
changed me, or dim the sweet remembrance of that fac