twenty--a real
devotion to an ideal, a faithfulness that can and will endure.

He was not one of the loose-tongued sort, who tell all to everybody. I
think he never spoke of Mademoiselle Capello to any one but to me,
and occasionally to Count Saxe. At night, when I sat in my room
reading by a single candle, before I went to bed, Gaston Cheverny
would come in, throw himself on my bed, and begin to rave over
Francezka. He would go back to his earliest childhood, and aided by
a very active imagination, prove that he had loved her ever since she
was born. He explained this to me very ingeniously, saying he was
in love with Francezka before he saw her, because he was in love
with a dream, of which Francezka was the reality. I listened
smiling and with a good heart. Knowing Gaston Cheverny well, I
thought him worthy, if any man was, of Francezka Capello. Sometimes he
would rave over her beauty, and would threaten to run me through
when I ventured to say that it was her wit and charm which made her
beautiful. Again, he was full of adoration for her lofty, high
spirit; and then bewailed it, as likely to lead her into unnumbered
dangers, from which Madame Riano was small protection--for Scotch Peg
loved adventures as a cat loves cream.

Gaston Cheverny was of a bookish turn, and was the first one who
quoted to me the saying about books: "In winter, you may read them,
_ad ignem_, by the fireside; and in summer, _ad umbram_, under some
shady tree; and therewith pass away the tedious hours." We passed away
some of our tedious hours at Mitau in this manner, but we had few
books. Among them luckily was a volume of Bourdaloue's sermons, of
which Count Saxe always made me read one whenever the Courlanders were
more devilish than usual in giving us fair words of emptiness for
truth; and my master always fitted the preacher's denunciations to his
enemies.

Gaston Cheverny and I made bold to correct Count Saxe's theology, but
he called us a couple of cheek turners, and declared he knew that the
Psalmist, as well as Bourdaloue, had the Courlanders in mind when he
denounced liars and hypocrites. Next to sermons my master liked the
verses and songs of that rogue of rogues, Francois Villon. Gaston
Cheverny sang these songs of Villon's very agreeably, accompanying
himself on the viol, and so whiled away some of our heaviest hours.
These diversions, together with our rat-killings, were the sum of our
amusements, for I do not reckon the ball