see if, at sixteen, we
cannot shuffle cards, and play tricks with the gamester of thirty. Yet
he may be in earnest, and faith I believe he is; but I must look well
before I leap, or consign my actions into such spiritual keeping.
However, if the worst come to the worst, if I do make this compact, and
am deceived,--if, above all, I am ever seduced, or led blindfold into
one of those snares which priestcraft sometimes lays to the cost of
honour,--why, I shall have a sword, which I shall never be at a loss
to use, and it can find its way through a priest's gown as well as a
soldier's corselet."

Confess that a youth who could think so promptly of his sword was well
fitted to wear one!

CHAPTER V.

RURAL HOSPITALITY.--AN EXTRAORDINARY GUEST.--A FIN$ GENTLEMAN IS NOT
NECESSARILY A FOOL.

WE were all three (my brothers and myself) precocious geniuses. Our
early instructions, under a man like the Abbe, at once learned and
worldly, and the society into which we had been initiated from our
childhood, made us premature adepts in the manners of the world; and I,
in especial, flattered myself that a quick habit of observation rendered
me no despicable profiter by my experience. Our academy, too, had been
more like a college than a school; and we had enjoyed a license that
seemed to the superficial more likely to benefit our manners than to
strengthen our morals. I do not think, however, that the latter suffered
by our freedom from restraint. On the contrary, we the earlier learned
that vice, but for the piquancy of its unlawfulness, would never be
so captivating a goddess; and our errors and crimes in after life had
certainly not their origin in our wanderings out of academical bounds.

It is right that I should mention our prematurity of intellect, because,
otherwise, much of my language and reflections, as detailed in the first
book of this history, might seem ill suited to the tender age at which
they occurred. However, they approach, as nearly as possible, to my
state of mind at that period; and I have, indeed, often mortified
my vanity in later life by thinking how little the march of time has
ripened my abilities, and how petty would have been the intellectual
acquisitions of manhood, if they had not brought me something like
content!

My uncle had always, during his retirement, seen as many people as he
could assemble out of the "mob of gentlemen who _live at_ ease." But,
on our quitting school and becoming men,