iculous suit of clothes, and caring nothing for
the real interests of life, torments itself about frivolities, about
neckcloths, and the passionate desire to appear a man. Then the young
fellow swells himself out; his swagger is all the more portentous
because it is exercised on nothings. Yet if he envies a fool who is
elegantly dressed, he is also capable of enthusiasm over talent, and of
genuine admiration for genius. Such defects as these, when they have no
root in the heart, prove only the exuberance of sap,--the richness of
the youthful imagination. That a lad of nineteen, an only child, kept
severely at home by poverty, adored by a mother who put upon herself
all privations for his sake, should be moved to envy by a young man of
twenty-two in a frogged surtout-coat silk-lined, a waist-coat of fancy
cashmere, and a cravat slipped through a ring of the worse taste, is
nothing more than a peccadillo committed in all ranks of social life by
inferiors who envy those that seem beyond them. Men of genius themselves
succumb to this primitive passion. Did not Rousseau admire Ventura and
Bacle?

But Oscar passed from peccadillo to evil feelings. He felt humiliated;
he was angry with the youth he envied, and there rose in his heart a
secret desire to show openly that he himself was as good as the object
of his envy.

The two young fellows continued to walk up and own from the gate to the
stables, and from the stables to the gate. Each time they turned they
looked at Oscar curled up in his corner of the coucou. Oscar, persuaded
that their jokes and laughter concerned himself, affected the utmost
indifference. He began to hum the chorus of a song lately brought into
vogue by the liberals, which ended with the words, "'Tis Voltaire's
fault, 'tis Rousseau's fault."

"Tiens! perhaps he is one of the chorus at the Opera," said Amaury.

This exasperated Oscar, who bounded up, pulled out the wooden "back,"
and called to Pierrotin:--

"When do we start?"

"Presently," said that functionary, who was standing, whip in hand, and
gazing toward the rue d'Enghien.

At this moment the scene was enlivened by the arrival of a young man
accompanied by a true "gamin," who was followed by a porter dragging
a hand-cart. The young man came up to Pierrotin and spoke to him
confidentially, on which the latter nodded his head, and called to his
own porter. The man ran out and helped to unload the little hand-cart,
which contained, besides tw