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lips whose coral was off-set by impeccably white teeth. He had the hands of a well-born man, elegant hands whose every gesture men feltconstrained to obey and which a woman would have wanted to kiss. He was slender but of average height. Any man looking at his feet would have been tempted to take him for a girl in disguise, the more so because, like most men of subtle, not to say astute mind, he had a woman’s shapely hips. This is usually reliable as a clue to character, and was so in Lucien’s case, for his restless turn of mind often brought him, when he came to analyse the present state cf society, to adopt the depravity of outlook characteristic of diplomats, who believe that any means however shameful they may be, are justified by success. One of the great misfortunes to which great intelligence is subjected is the necessity of comprehending all things, vice and virtue alike.
    These two young people passed sovereign judgement on society the more readily because of the inferiority of their own status, for unappreciated men make up for their lowly position by the disdainful eye they cast upon the world. Moreover their despair was the more bitter because it made them press on more impetuously to what they regarded as their true destiny. Lucien had done much reading and much comparing; David did much thinking and much pondering. Although the printer seemed to enjoy the robust health of a peasant, he was a man of melancholic, even sickly genius and was lacking in self-confidence; whereas Lucien, possessing more initiative but less stability of mind, displayed an audacity which tallied ill with his languid, almost frail though femininely graceful physique. His was superlatively a Gascon temperament, bold, courageous, adventurous, overrating the bright and minimizing the gloomy side of things, never recoiling from a profitable misdeed and making light of vice if it served as a stepping-stone. These ambitious tendencies were so far kept in check by the beautiful illusions of youth which inclined him towards the nobler means which men enamoured of glory adopt in preference to any others. As yet he was at grips only with his own desires and not the difficulties of life, with his own potentialities and not that moral laxity which sets a terrible temptation to volatile spirits. Deeply fascinated by Lucien’s brilliance of mind, David continued to admirehim even while correcting the errors into which the
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flung him. The upright David’s timidity of character was in conflict with his robustness of constitution, though he did not lack the doggedness of northern Frenchmen. Quick at discerning all difficulties, he was nevertheless ready to face them without losing heart; and he tempered the firmness of a truly apostolic rectitude with gracious and inexhaustible forbearance. In this long-established friendship, one of them loved the other to the point of idolatory: it was David. And so Lucien assumed control like a woman conscious of being loved, while David gave willing obedience. His friend’s physical beauty implied an ascendancy which David acknowledged, believing himself to be uncouth and commonplace.
    ‘The patient ox should draw the plough, the bird should be carefree,’ the printer told himself. ‘I will be the ox, Lucien shall be the eagle.’
    For nearly three years therefore, the two friends had had one common destiny, one bright future ahead of them. They read the masterpieces which, once peace was proclaimed, loomed up on the literary and scientific horizon: the works of Schiller, Goethe, Lord Byron, Walter Scott, Jean-Paul Richter, Berzelius, Sir Humphry Davy, Cuvier, Lamartine etc. They drew warmth from these flaming hearths, made their own abortive writing efforts, took them up, laid them down, took them up again with ardour, toiling on continually without exhausting their unflagging youthful energy. Both were poor but fired with the love of art and science, and they forgot their present poverty in