embered. But
I soon perceived that their souls were as unlike as their bodies were
like. It is true, I had seen Gaston Cheverny only once, but the
circumstances of that meeting were not to be forgotten. I am not given
to sudden loves, but I had loved Gaston Cheverny at first sight. I
loved him for his foolhardiness, his presumption, in fighting me; I
loved him because he loved fighting; I loved him because he could
laugh in the face of death--in short, it was one of those strange
kinships of the soul which make one man feel of another, the first
time he sees him--"We are brothers." And in the same way, I misliked
Regnard Cheverny. He was a man strong enough to inspire love or hate.
I have myself often heard that writing fellow, the Duc de St. Simon,
say that love and hatred spring from the same root, and I believe it.

I also saw that Regnard Cheverny was a man of parts, and so regarded.
I found out by the accident of conversation, that he had a head for
affairs--a thing rare in his class. It was inherited from some of his
Scotch ancestors, no doubt--for the Cheverny family had intermarried
with the Scotch Jacobites, and had a large strain of Scotch blood in
them. As Jacques Haret had told me, Regnard Cheverny had, during the
preceding year, become possessed of the last remnant of Jacques
Haret's fortune, in Castle Haret, in Brabant, which had been sold for
a song under the accumulated debts of many generations of Harets. I
looked with interest at a young man, who, at twenty-three years of
age, had so well feathered his nest; for his original patrimony, I
inferred at the time, and found afterward to be true, was small. He
was handsomer than his brother, being more matured, and there were a
thousand subtile differences between them; but it all came down to
this--Gaston Cheverny was to be loved--Regnard Cheverny was not.

Presently, supper was announced. It was there, around the table, that
wit sparkled. Mademoiselle Lecouvreur sat at the head, with Count Saxe
on one hand and Monsieur Voltaire on the other. She loved my master
the best of any person in the world--but she knew that Monsieur
Voltaire loved her the best of any one in the world--and he was very
capable of love.

Monsieur Voltaire, as everybody knew, was to be sent packing to
England, but with his usual adroitness, he made out that England
was the country of all others he wished to see; that my Lord
Bolingbroke--Harry St. John, as Monsieur Voltaire called h