s that his father and mother, then
retired from business, placed upon him stimulated the youth's vanity
without exciting his pride. His parents lived simply, like the thrifty
Dutch, spending only one fourth of an income of twelve thousand francs.
They intended their savings, together with half their capital, for the
purchase of a notary's practice for their son. Subjected to the rule
of this domestic economy, Godefroid found his immediate state so
disproportioned to the visions of himself and his parents, that he
grew discouraged. In some feeble natures discouragement turns to envy;
others, in whom necessity, will, reflection, stand in place of talent,
march straight and resolutely in the path traced out for bourgeois
ambitions. Godefroid, on the contrary, revolted, wished to shine, tried
several brilliant ways, and blinded his eyes. He endeavored to succeed;
but all his efforts ended in proving the fact of his own impotence.
Admitting at last the inequality that existed between his desires
and his capacities, he began to hate all social supremacies, became
a Liberal, and attempted to reach celebrity by writing a book; but he
learned, to his cost, to regard talent as he did nobility. Having tried
the law, the notariat, and literature, without distinguishing himself in
any way, his mind now turned to the magistracy.

About this time his father died. His mother, who contented herself
in her old age with two thousand francs a year, gave the rest of the
fortune to Godefroid. Thus possessed, at the age of twenty-five, of ten
thousand francs a year, he felt himself rich; and he was so, relatively
to the past. Until then his life had been spent on acts without will, on
wishes that were impotent; now, to advance with the age, to act, to play
a part, he resolved to enter some career or find some connection that
should further his fortunes. He first thought of journalism, which
always opens its arms to any capital that may come in its way. To be the
owner of a newspaper is to become a personage at once; such a man works
intellect, and has all the gratifications of it and none of the labor.
Nothing is more tempting to inferior minds than to be able to rise in
this way on the talents of others. Paris has seen two or three parvenus
of this kind,--men whose success is a disgrace, both to the epoch and to
those who have lent them their shoulders.

In this sphere Godefroid was soon outdone by the brutal Machiavellianism
of some, or by