eal like you. Of course his cocked
hat, his long hair in a black ribbon, his cinnamon velvet suit and his
flowered waistcoat made a difference. We gentlemen used to wear swords."

There was really the touch of grace in my poor friend's divagations--the
disheartened dandy had so positively turned rhapsodist and seer. I
was particularly struck with his having laid aside the diffidence and
self-consciousness of the first days of our acquaintance. He had become
by this time a disembodied observer and critic; the shell of sense,
growing daily thinner and more transparent, transmitted the tremor of
his quickened spirit. He seemed to pick up acquaintances, in the course
of our contemplations, merely by putting out his hand. If I left him for
ten minutes I was sure to find him on my return in earnest conversation
with some affable wandering scholar. Several young men with whom he had
thus established relations invited him to their rooms and entertained
him, as I gathered, with rather rash hospitality. For myself, I chose
not to be present at these symposia; I shrank partly from being held
in any degree responsible for his extravagance, partly from the pang of
seeing him yield to champagne and an admiring circle. He reported such
adventures with less keen a complacency than I had supposed he might
use, but a certain method in his madness, a certain dignity in his
desire to fraternise, appeared to save him from mischance. If they
didn't think him a harmless lunatic they certainly thought him a
celebrity of the Occident. Two things, however, grew evident--that he
drank deeper than was good for him and that the flagrant freshness of
his young patrons rather interfered with his predetermined sense of the
element of finer romance. At the same time it completed his knowledge
of the place. Making the acquaintance of several tutors and fellows,
he dined in hall in half a dozen colleges, alluding afterwards to these
banquets with religious unction. One evening after a participation
indiscreetly prolonged he came back to the hotel in a cab, accompanied
by a friendly undergraduate and a physician and looking deadly pale. He
had swooned away on leaving table and remained so rigidly unconscious
as much to agitate his banqueters. The following twenty-four hours he of
course spent in bed, but on the third day declared himself strong enough
to begin afresh. On his reaching the street his strength once more
forsook him, so that I insisted on his