west end of the scale, for
unrecognized power is apt to avenge itself for lowly station by viewing
the world from a lofty standpoint. Yet it is, nevertheless, true that
they grew but the more bitter and hopeless after these swift soaring
flights to the upper regions of thought, their world by right. Lucien
had read much and compared; David had thought much and deeply. In spite
of the young printer's look of robust, country-bred health, his turn
of mind was melancholy and somewhat morbid--he lacked confidence in
himself; but Lucien, on the other hand, with a boldness little to be
expected from his feminine, almost effeminate, figure, graceful
though it was, Lucien possessed the Gascon temperament to the highest
degree--rash, brave, and adventurous, prone to make the most of the
bright side, and as little as possible of the dark; his was the nature
that sticks at no crime if there is anything to be gained by it, and
laughs at the vice which serves as a stepping-stone. Just now these
tendencies of ambition were held in check, partly by the fair illusions
of youth, partly by the enthusiasm which led him to prefer the nobler
methods, which every man in love with glory tries first of all. Lucien
was struggling as yet with himself and his own desires, and not with
the difficulties of life; at strife with his own power, and not with the
baseness of other men, that fatal exemplar for impressionable minds.
The brilliancy of his intellect had a keen attraction for David. David
admired his friend, while he kept him out of the scrapes into which he
was led by the _furie francaise_.

David, with his well-balanced mind and timid nature at variance with a
strong constitution, was by no means wanting in the persistence of the
Northern temper; and if he saw all the difficulties before him, none
the less he vowed to himself to conquer, never to give way. In him the
unswerving virtue of an apostle was softened by pity that sprang from
inexhaustible indulgence. In the friendship grown old already, one was
the worshiper, and that one was David; Lucien ruled him like a woman
sure of love, and David loved to give way. He felt that his friend's
physical beauty implied a real superiority, which he accepted, looking
upon himself as one made of coarser and commoner human clay.

"The ox for patient labor in the fields, the free life for the bird," he
thought to himself. "I will be the ox, and Lucien shall be the eagle."

So for three years these