.

"What are you up to?" said the latter. "One no longer sees anything of
you."

"I am studying the poetry of intimacy," replied Rodolphe.

The poor fellow spoke the truth. He sought from Louise more than the
poor girl could give him. An oaten pipe, she had not the strains of a
lyre. She spoke to, so to say, the jargon of love, and Rodolphe
insisted upon speaking the classic language. Thus they scarcely
understood each other.

A week later, at the same ball at which she had found Rodolphe, Louise
met a fair young fellow, who danced with her several times, and at the
close of the entertainment took her home with him.

He was a second year's student. He spoke the prose of pleasure very
fluently, and had good eyes and a well-lined pocket.

Louise asked him for ink and paper, and wrote to Rodolphe a letter
couched as follows:--

"Do not rekkon on me at all. I sende you a kiss for the last time.
Good bye.

Louise."

As Rodolphe was reading this letter on reaching home in the evening, his
light suddenly went out.

"Hallo!" said he, reflectively, "it is the candle I first lit on the
evening that Louise came--it was bound to finish with our union. If I
had known I would have chosen a longer one," he added, in a tone of half
annoyance, half of regret, and he placed his mistress' note in a drawer,
which he sometimes styled the catacomb of his loves.

One day, being at Marcel's, Rodolphe picked up from the ground to light
his pipe with, a scrap of paper on which he recognized his handwriting
and the orthography of Louise.

"I have," said he to his friend, "an autograph of the same person, only
there are two mistakes the less than in yours. Does not that prove that
she loved me better than you?"

"That proves that you are a simpleton," replied Marcel. "White arms and
shoulders have no need of grammar."

CHAPTER IV

ALI RODOLPHE; OR, THE TURK PERFORCE

Ostracized by an inhospitable proprietor, Rodolphe had for some time
been leading a life compared with which the existence of a cloud is
rather stationary. He practiced assiduously the arts of going to bed
without supper, and supping without going to bed. He often dined with
Duke Humphrey, and generally slept at the sign of a clear sky. Still,
amid all these crosses and troubles, two things never forsook him; his
good humor and the manuscript of "The Avenger," a drama which had gone
the rounds of all the theaters in Paris.

One day Rodo