ishment was in speaking veraciously of my punishers.
Never tell me of the pang of falsehood to the slandered: nothing is
so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough
truth!

As I grew older, I saw my power and indulged it; and, being scolded
for sarcasm, I was flattered into believing I had wit; so I punned and
jested, lampooned and satirized, till I was as much a torment to
others as I was tormented myself. The secret of all this was that I
was unhappy. Nobody loved me: I felt it to my heart of hearts. I
was conscious of injustice, and the sense of it made me bitter. Our
feelings, especially in youth, resemble that leaf which, in some old
traveller, is described as expanding itself to warmth, but when chilled,
not only shrinking and closing, but presenting to the spectator thorns
which had lain concealed upon the opposite side of it before.

With my brother Gerald, I had a deadly and irreconcilable feud. He was
much stouter, taller, and stronger than myself; and, far from conceding
to me that respect which I imagined my priority of birth entitled me
to claim, he took every opportunity to deride my pretensions, and
to vindicate the cause of the superior strength and vigour which
constituted his own. It would have done your heart good to have seen us
cuff one another, we did it with such zeal. There is nothing in human
passion like a good brotherly hatred! My mother said, with the most
feeling earnestness, that she used to feel us fighting even before our
birth: we certainly lost no time directly after it. Both my parents were
secretly vexed that I had come into the world an hour sooner than my
brother; and Gerald himself looked upon it as a sort of juggle,--a kind
of jockeyship by which he had lost the prerogative of birthright. This
very early rankled in his heart, and he was so much a greater favourite
than myself that, instead of rooting out so unfortunate a feeling on his
part, my good parents made no scruple of openly lamenting my seniority.
I believe the real cause of our being taken from the domestic
instructions of the Abbe (who was an admirable teacher) and sent to
school, was solely to prevent my uncle deciding everything in my favour.
Montreuil, however, accompanied us to our academy, and remained with
us during the three years in which we were perfecting ourselves in the
blessings of education.

At the end of the second year, a prize was instituted for the best
proficient at a ver