Christopher Columbus, and Julius Caesar,--all these
world-famous gamblers had begun life hampered with debt, or as poor men;
all of them had been misunderstood, taken for madmen, reviled for bad
sons, bad brothers, bad fathers; and yet in after life each one had come
to be the pride of his family, of his country, of the civilized world.

Her arguments fell upon fertile soil in the worst of Lucien's nature,
and spread corruption in his heart; for him, when his desires were hot,
all means were admissible. But--failure is high treason against society;
and when the fallen conqueror has run amuck through _bourgeois_ virtues,
and pulled down the pillars of society, small wonder that society,
finding Marius seated among the ruins, should drive him forth in
abhorrence. All unconsciously Lucien stood with the palm of genius on
the one hand and a shameful ending in the hulks upon the other; and,
on high upon the Sinai of the prophets, beheld no Dead Sea covering the
cities of the plain--the hideous winding-sheet of Gomorrah.

So well did Louise loosen the swaddling-bands of provincial life that
confined the heart and brain of her poet that the said poet determined
to try an experiment upon her. He wished to feel certain that this proud
conquest was his without laying himself open to the mortification of
a rebuff. The forthcoming soiree gave him his opportunity. Ambition
blended with his love. He loved, and he meant to rise, a double desire
not unnatural in young men with a heart to satisfy and the battle of
life to fight. Society, summoning all her children to one banquet,
arouses ambition in the very morning of life. Youth is robbed of its
charm, and generous thoughts are corrupted by mercenary scheming. The
idealist would fain have it otherwise, but intrusive fact too often
gives the lie to the fiction which we should like to believe, making it
impossible to paint the young man of the nineteenth century other than
he is. Lucien imagined that his scheming was entirely prompted by good
feeling, and persuaded himself that it was done solely for his friend
David's sake.

He wrote a long letter to his Louise; he felt bolder, pen in hand, than
face to face. In a dozen sheets, copied out three several times, he
told her of his father's genius and blighted hopes and of his grinding
poverty. He described his beloved sister as an angel, and David as
another Cuvier, a great man of the future, and a father, friend, and
brother to him in