as a new era in my boyish life. I grew henceforth both better
and worse. Application and I having once shaken hands became very good
acquaintance. I had hitherto valued myself upon supplying the frailties
of a delicate frame by an uncommon agility in all bodily exercises. I
now strove rather to improve the deficiencies of my mind, and became
orderly, industrious, and devoted to study. So far so well; but as I
grew wiser, I grew also more wary. Candour no longer seemed to me
the finest of virtues. I thought before I spoke: and second thought
sometimes quite changed the nature of the intended speech; in short,
gentlemen of the next century, to tell you the exact truth, the little
Count Devereux became somewhat of a hypocrite!

CHAPTER IV.

A CONTEST OF ART AND A LEAGUE OF FRIENDSHIP.--TWO CHARACTERS IN MUTUAL
IGNORANCE OF EACH OTHER, AND THE READER NO WISER THAN EITHER OF THEM.

THE Abbe was now particularly courteous to me. He made Gerald and myself
breakfast with him, and told us nothing was so amiable as friendship
among brothers. We agreed to the sentiment, and, like all philosophers,
did not agree a bit the better for acknowledging the same first
principles. Perhaps, notwithstanding his fine speeches, the Abbe was
the real cause of our continued want of cordiality. However, we did not
fight any more: we avoided each other, and at last became as civil and
as distant as those mathematical lines which appear to be taking all
possible pains to approach one another and never get a jot the nearer
for it. Oh! your civility is the prettiest invention possible for
dislike! Aubrey and I were inseparable, and we both gained by the
intercourse. I grew more gentle, and he more masculine; and, for my
part, the kindness of his temper so softened the satire of mine that I
learned at last to smile full as often as to sneer.

The Abbe had obtained a wonderful hold over Aubrey; he had made the poor
boy think so much of the next world, that he had lost all relish for
this. He lived in a perpetual fear of offence: he was like a chemist of
conscience, and weighed minutiae by scruples. To play, to ride, to run,
to laugh at a jest, or to banquet on a melon, were all sins to be atoned
for; and I have found (as a penance for eating twenty-three cherries
instead of eighteen) the penitent of fourteen standing, barefooted,
in the coldest nights of winter, upon the hearthstones, almost utterly
naked, and shivering like a leaf, beneath the