kind
of fierceness, cut dead.

"One, provoked by such conduct, would fain have resented it with words
as disdainful; while another, shocked by the change, and, in concern for
a friend, magnanimously overlooking affronts, implored to know what
sudden, secret grief had distempered him. But from resentment and from
tenderness Charlemont alike turned away.

"Ere long, to the general surprise, the merchant Charlemont was
gazetted, and the same day it was reported that he had withdrawn from
town, but not before placing his entire property in the hands of
responsible assignees for the benefit of creditors.

"Whither he had vanished, none could guess. At length, nothing being
heard, it was surmised that he must have made away with himself--a
surmise, doubtless, originating in the remembrance of the change some
months previous to his bankruptcy--a change of a sort only to be
ascribed to a mind suddenly thrown from its balance.

"Years passed. It was spring-time, and lo, one bright morning,
Charlemont lounged into the St. Louis coffee-houses--gay, polite,
humane, companionable, and dressed in the height of costly elegance. Not
only was he alive, but he was himself again. Upon meeting with old
acquaintances, he made the first advances, and in such a manner that it
was impossible not to meet him half-way. Upon other old friends, whom he
did not chance casually to meet, he either personally called, or left
his card and compliments for them; and to several, sent presents of game
or hampers of wine.

"They say the world is sometimes harshly unforgiving, but it was not so
to Charlemont. The world feels a return of love for one who returns to
it as he did. Expressive of its renewed interest was a whisper, an
inquiring whisper, how now, exactly, so long after his bankruptcy, it
fared with Charlemont's purse. Rumor, seldom at a loss for answers,
replied that he had spent nine years in Marseilles in France, and there
acquiring a second fortune, had returned with it, a man devoted
henceforth to genial friendships.

"Added years went by, and the restored wanderer still the same; or
rather, by his noble qualities, grew up like golden maize in the
encouraging sun of good opinions. But still the latent wonder was, what
had caused that change in him at a period when, pretty much as now, he
was, to all appearance, in the possession of the same fortune, the same
friends, the same popularity. But nobody thought it would be the thing
to ques