t out themselves with that unreserve
permitted to the stage; so, in books of fiction, they look not only for
more entertainment, but, at bottom, even for more reality, than real
life itself can show. Thus, though they want novelty, they want nature,
too; but nature unfettered, exhilarated, in effect transformed. In this
way of thinking, the people in a fiction, like the people in a play,
must dress as nobody exactly dresses, talk as nobody exactly talks, act
as nobody exactly acts. It is with fiction as with religion: it should
present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.

If, then, something is to be pardoned to well-meant endeavor, surely a
little is to be allowed to that writer who, in all his scenes, does but
seek to minister to what, as he understands it, is the implied wish of
the more indulgent lovers of entertainment, before whom harlequin can
never appear in a coat too parti-colored, or cut capers too fantastic.

One word more. Though every one knows how bootless it is to be in all
cases vindicating one's self, never mind how convinced one may be that
he is never in the wrong; yet, so precious to man is the approbation of
his kind, that to rest, though but under an imaginary censure applied to
but a work of imagination, is no easy thing. The mention of this
weakness will explain why such readers as may think they perceive
something harmonious between the boisterous hilarity of the cosmopolitan
with the bristling cynic, and his restrained good-nature with the
boon-companion, are now referred to that chapter where some similar
apparent inconsistency in another character is, on general principles,
modestly endeavored to-be apologized for.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

IN WHICH THE COSMOPOLITAN TELLS THE STORY OF THE GENTLEMAN MADMAN.

"Charlemont was a young merchant of French descent, living in St.
Louis--a man not deficient in mind, and possessed of that sterling and
captivating kindliness, seldom in perfection seen but in youthful
bachelors, united at times to a remarkable sort of gracefully
devil-may-care and witty good-humor. Of course, he was admired by
everybody, and loved, as only mankind can love, by not a few. But in his
twenty-ninth year a change came over him. Like one whose hair turns gray
in a night, so in a day Charlemont turned from affable to morose. His
acquaintances were passed without greeting; while, as for his
confidential friends, them he pointedly, unscrupulously, and with a