have not seared a kind
heart. He is as energetic on behalf of another as he is careless where
his own interests are concerned; and if he bestirs himself, it is for a
friend. Living up to his Rabelaisian mask, he is no enemy to good cheer,
though he never goes out of his way to find it; he is melancholy and
gay. His friends dubbed him the "Dog of the Regiment." You could have no
better portrait of the man than his nickname.

Three more of the band, at least as remarkable as the friends who have
just been sketched in outline, were destined to fall by the way. Of
these, Meyraux was the first. Meyraux died after stirring up the famous
controversy between Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, a great question
which divided the whole scientific world into two opposite camps, with
these two men of equal genius as leaders. This befell some months before
the death of the champion of rigorous analytical science as opposed
to the pantheism of one who is still living to bear an honored name in
Germany. Meyraux was the friend of that "Louis" of whom death was so
soon to rob the intellectual world.

With these two, both marked by death, and unknown to-day in spite of
their wide knowledge and their genius, stands a third, Michel Chrestien,
the great Republican thinker, who dreamed of European Federation, and
had no small share in bringing about the Saint-Simonian movement of
1830. A politician of the calibre of Saint-Just and Danton, but simple,
meek as a maid, and brimful of illusions and loving-kindness; the owner
of a singing voice which would have sent Mozart, or Weber, or Rossini
into ecstasies, for his singing of certain songs of Beranger's could
intoxicate the heart in you with poetry, or hope, or love--Michel
Chrestien, poor as Lucien, poor as Daniel d'Arthez, as all the rest
of his friends, gained a living with the haphazard indifference of
a Diogenes. He indexed lengthy works, he drew up prospectuses for
booksellers, and kept his doctrines to himself, as the grave keeps the
secrets of the dead. Yet the gay bohemian of intellectual life, the
great statesman who might have changed the face of the world, fell as a
private soldier in the cloister of Saint-Merri; some shopkeeper's bullet
struck down one of the noblest creatures that ever trod French soil, and
Michel Chrestien died for other doctrines than his own. His Federation
scheme was more dangerous to the aristocracy of Europe than the
Republican propaganda; it was more feasi