we are going to enter the convict's prison and to drop our illusions.
Although one has no belief left, except in the devil, one may regret
the paradise of one's youth and the age of innocence, when we devoutly
offered the tip of our tongue to some good priest for the consecrated
wafer of the sacrament. Ah, my good friends, our first peccadilloes gave
us so much pleasure because the consequent remorse set them off and lent
a keen relish to them; but nowadays----"

"Oh! now," said the first speaker, "there is still left----"

"What?" asked another.

"Crime----"

"There is a word as high as the gallows and deeper than the Seine," said
Raphael.

"Oh, you don't understand me; I mean political crime. Since this
morning, a conspirator's life is the only one I covet. I don't know that
the fancy will last over to-morrow, but to-night at least my gorge rises
at the anaemic life of our civilization and its railroad evenness. I am
seized with a passion for the miseries of retreat from Moscow, for the
excitements of the Red Corsair, or for a smuggler's life. I should like
to go to Botany Bay, as we have no Chartreaux left us here in France;
it is a sort of infirmary reserved for little Lord Byrons who, having
crumpled up their lives like a serviette after dinner, have nothing left
to do but to set their country ablaze, blow their own brains out, plot
for a republic or clamor for a war----"

"Emile," Raphael's neighbor called eagerly to the speaker, "on my honor,
but for the revolution of July I would have taken orders, and gone off
down into the country somewhere to lead the life of an animal, and----"

"And you would have read your breviary through every day."

"Yes."

"You are a coxcomb!"

"Why, we read the newspapers as it is!"

"Not bad that, for a journalist! But hold your tongue, we are going
through a crowd of subscribers. Journalism, look you, is the religion of
modern society, and has even gone a little further."

"What do you mean?"

"Its pontiffs are not obliged to believe in it any more than the people
are."

Chatting thus, like good fellows who have known their _De Viris
illustribus_ for years past, they reached a mansion in the Rue Joubert.

Emile was a journalist who had acquired more reputation by dint of
doing nothing than others had derived from their achievements. A bold,
caustic, and powerful critic, he possessed all the qualities that his
defects permitted. An outspoken giber, he made numberl