the lavish prodigality of others; by the fortunes of
ambitious capitalists, or by the wit and shrewdness of editors. Meantime
he was drawn into all the dissipations that arise from literary
or political life, and he yielded to the temptations incurred by
journalists behind the scenes. He soon found himself in bad company; but
this experience taught him that his appearance was insignificant, that
he had one shoulder higher than the other, without the inequality being
redeemed by either malignancy or kindness of nature. Such were the
truths these artists made him feel.

Small, ill-made, without superiority of mind or settled purpose, what
chance was there for a man like that in an age when success in any
career demands that the highest qualities of the mind be furthered by
luck, or by tenacity of will which commands luck.

The revolution of 1830 stanched Godefroid's wounds. He had the courage
of hope, which is equal to that of despair. He obtained an appointment,
like other obscure journalists, to a government situation in the
provinces, where his liberal ideas, conflicting with the necessities
of the new power, made him a troublesome instrument. Bitten with
liberalism, he did not know, as cleverer men did, how to steer a course.
Obedience to ministers he regarded as sacrificing his opinions. Besides,
the government seemed to him to be disobeying the laws of its own
origin. Godefroid declared for progress, where the object of the
government was to maintain the _statu quo_. He returned to Paris almost
poor, but faithful still to the doctrines of the Opposition.

Alarmed by the excesses of the press, more alarmed still by the
attempted outrages of the republican party, he sought in retirement
from the world the only life suitable for a being whose faculties were
incomplete, and without sufficient force to bear up against the rough
jostling of political life, the struggles and sufferings of which confer
no credit,--a being, too, who was wearied with his many miscarriages;
without friends, for friendship demands either striking merits or
striking defects, and yet possessing a sensibility of soul more dreamy
than profound. Surely a retired life was the course left for a young man
whom pleasure had more than once misled,--whose heart was already aged
by contact with a world as restless as it was disappointing.

His mother, who was dying in the peaceful village of Auteuil, recalled
her son to live with her, partly to have hi