vigorousrelief that would have tempted the brush of some great

painter.
David's physique was of the kind that Nature gives to the fighter, the

man born to struggle in obscurity, or with the eyes of all men turned
upon him. The strong shoulders, rising above the broad chest, were in

keeping with the full development of his whole frame. With his thick
crop of black hair, his fleshy, high-colored, swarthy face, supported

by a thick neck, he looked at first sight like one of Boileau's
canons: but on a second glance there was that in the lines about the

thick lips, in the dimple of the chin, in the turn of the square
nostrils, with the broad irregular line of central cleavage, and,

above all, in the eyes, with the steady light of an all-absorbing love
that burned in them, which revealed the real character of the man--the

wisdom of the thinker, the strenuousmelancholy of a spirit that
discerns the horizon on either side, and sees clearly to the end of

winding ways, turning the clear light of analysis upon the joys of
fruition, known as yet in idea alone, and quick to turn from them in

disgust. You might look for the flash of genius from such a face; you
could not miss the ashes of the volcano; hopes extinguished beneath a

profound sense of the social annihilation to which lowly birth and
lack of fortune condemns so many a loftier mind. And by the side of

the poor printer, who loathed a handicraft so closely allied to
intellectual work, close to this Silenus, joyless, self-sustained,

drinking deep draughts from the cup of knowledge and of poetry that he
might forget the cares of his narrow lot in the intoxication of soul

and brain, stood Lucien, graceful as some sculptured Indian Bacchus.
For in Lucien's face there was the distinction of line which stamps

the beauty of the antique; the Greek profile, with the velvet
whiteness of women's faces, and eyes full of love, eyes so blue that

they looked dark against a pearly setting, and dewy and fresh as those
of a child. Those beautiful eyes looked out from under their long

chestnut lashes, beneath eyebrows that might have been traced by a
Chinese pencil. The silken down on his cheeks, like his bright curling

hair, shone golden in the sunlight. A divine graciousness transfused
the white temples that caught that golden gleam; a matchless nobleness

had set its seal in the short chin raised, but not abruptly. The smile
that hovered about the coral lips, yet redder as they seemed by force

of contrast with the even teeth, was the smile of some sorrowing
angel. Lucien's hands denoted race; they were shapely hands; hands

that men obey at a sign, and women love to kiss. Lucien was slender
and of middle height. From a glance at his feet, he might have been

taken for a girl in disguise, and this so much the more easily from
the femininecontour of the hips, a characteristic of keen-witted, not

to say, astute, men. This is a trait which seldom misleads, and in
Lucien it was a true indication of character; for when he analyzed the

society of to-day, his restless mind was apt to take its stand on the
lower ground of those diplomatists who hold that success justifies the

use of any means however base. It is one of the misfortunes attendant
upon great intellects that perforce they comprehend all things, both

good and evil.
The two young men judged society by the more lofty standard because

their social position was at the lowest 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" target="_blank" title="n.气质；性格">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 friends had mingled the destinies bright with

such glorious promise. Together they read the great works that
appeared above the horizon of literature and science since the Peace--

the poems of Schiller, Goethe, and Byron, the prose writings of Scott,
Jean-Paul, Berzelius, Davy, Cuvier, Lamartine, and many more. They

warmed themselves beside these great hearthfires; they tried their
powers in abortive creations, in work laid aside and taken up again

with new glow of enthusiasm. Incessantly they worked with the
unwearied vitality of youth; comrades in poverty, comrades in the

consuming love of art and science, till they forgot the hard life of
the present, for their minds were wholly bent on laying the

foundations of future fame.
"Lucien," said David, "do you know what I have just received from

Paris?" He drew a tiny volume from his pocket. "Listen!"
And David read, as a poet can read, first Andre de Chenier's Idyll

Neerc, then Le Malade, following on with the Elegy on a Suicide,
another elegy in the classic taste, and the last two Iambes.

"So that is Andre de Chenier!" Lucien exclaimed again and again. "It
fills one with despair!" he cried for the third time, when David

surrendered the book to him, unable to read further for emotion.--"A
poet rediscovered by a poet!" said Lucien, reading the signature of

the preface.
"After Chenier had written those poems, he thought that he had written

nothing worth publishing," added David.
Then Lucien in his turn read aloud the fragment of an epic called

L'Aveugle and two or three of the Elegies, till, when he came upon the
line--

If they know not bliss, is there happiness on earth?
He pressed the book to his lips, and tears came to the eyes of either,

for the two friends were lovers and fellow-worshipers.
The vine-stems were changing color with the spring; covering the

rifted, battered walls of the old house where squalid cracks were
spreading in every direction, with fluted columns and knots and bas-

reliefs and uncounted masterpieces of I know not what order of
architecture, erected by fairy hands. Fancy had scattered flowers and

crimson gems over the gloomy little yard, and Chenier's Camille became
for David the Eve whom he worshiped, for Lucien a great lady to whom

he paid his homage. Poetry had shaken out her starry robe above the
workshop where the "monkeys" and "bears" were grotesquely busy among

types and presses. Five o'clock struck, but the friends felt neither
hunger nor thirst; life had turned to a golden dream, and all the

treasures of the world lay at their feet. Far away on the horizon lay
the blue streak to which Hope points a finger in storm and stress; and

a siren voice sounded in their ears, calling, "Come, spread your
wings; through that streak of gold or silver or azure lies the sure

way of escape from evil fortune!"
Just at that moment the low glass door of the workshop was opened, and

out came Cerizet, an apprentice (David had brought the urchin from
Paris). This youth introduced a stranger, who saluted the friends

politely, and spoke to David.