ing to leave him, and yet, by some curious chain
of events, bound up inseparably with his fortunes. At one moment his
poverty was the tie between us We supported ourselves by the _chasse_,
a poor and most precarious livelihood, and one which we well knew
would fail us when the spring came. At other moments he would gain an
influence over me by the exercise of that sanguine, hopeful spirit which
seemed never to desert him. He saw, or affected to see, that the great
drama of revolution which closed the century in France must yet be
played out over the length and breadth of Europe, and that in this great
piece the chief actors would be those who had all to gain and nothing
to lose by the convulsion. "We shall have good parts in the play,
Gregoire," would he repeat to me, time after time, till he thoroughly
filled my mind with ambitions that rose far above the region of all
probability, and, worse still, that utterly silenced every whisper of
conscience within me.

Had he attempted to corrupt me by the vulgar ideas of wealth,--by
the splendor of a life of luxurious ease and enjoyment, with all the
appliances of riches,--it is more than likely he would have failed. He
however assailed me by my weak side: the delight I always experienced
in acts of protection and benevolence--the pleasure I felt in being
regarded by others as their good genius--this was a flattery that never
ceased to sway me! The selfishness of such a part lay so hidden from
view; there was a plausibility in one's conviction of being good and
amiable,--that the enjoyment became really of a higher order than
usually waits on mere egotism. I had been long estranged from the world,
so far as the ties of affection and friendship existed. For me there was
neither home nor family, and yet I yearned for what would bind me to the
cause of my fellow-men. All my thoughts were now centred on this object,
and innumerable were the projects by which I amused my imagination about
it. Ysaffich perhaps detected this clew to my confidence. At all events,
he made it the pivot of all reasonings with me. To be powerless with
good intentions--to have the "will" to work for good, and yet want the
"way"--was, he would say, about the severest torture poor humanity could
be called on to endure. When he had so far imbued my mind with these
notions that he found me not only penetrated with his own views, but
actually employing his own reasonings, his very expressions, to maintain
them,