n. On the contrary, he became more and more a convert
to Don Juan's love--philosophy, and allowed only the millionaire and
Prince Etc. to sue for favour, while the sceptical Louis grew wholly
averse to the fair sex.

From early youth, he had secretly written lyric poetry, and his
productions, which, it is true, were imitative rather than original,
were pleasant to read and correct in form. He sent some under his own
name to great weekly periodicals, and they not only appeared at once
but he obtained the most flattering requests for more contributions.
This afforded him much gratification, but again only for a brief time.
Under the influence of his suspicious spirit of investigation, he sent
several poems, with an unpretending assumed signature, to other papers.
He either received no reply or curt rejections in the editors'
letter-box. So he was done with that too.

He tried the "naive" life of pleasure, as he called it. With small
success. Gaming soon ceased to attract him, for at the roulette table
in Monaco he loathed the companionship of old professional gamblers
with their gallows-bird faces, and of bedizened Paris courtesans, and
at his club in Berlin or Baden, where he played only with respectable
people, the stakes were never high enough to permit even the largest
possible gain or loss to excite him. The pleasures of the epicure
afforded him more satisfaction, and his table was famous among his
peers. He soon wearied of wine; the discomfort caused by intoxication
seemed to him too large a price to pay for the enjoyment of drinking.
This caused his guests to banter him about his moderation, and allude
to the historic drinking-horn of gigantic size, which, as the
chronicles of the House attested, his ancestors used to drain at their
banquets, though in those days the Burgundy was far from its present
perfection, and Canary had not yet been invented. His companions'
enthusiasm for drinking at last disgusted him with entertaining, and he
gradually lost his taste for choice dinners also.

Once, while living on his Silesian estates, whose extent was equal to a
small kingdom, he became ill, and was obliged to send for the district
physician. This man, who afterwards obtained a world-wide reputation,
was then young, unknown, and apparently an ordinary country doctor.
The prince, however, soon perceived that he was far superior to his
circumstances and position, and placed himself upon a very confidential
foot