Honorine | Page 5

life escaped public comment
by its hermit-like simplicity and by constant hard work.
"Let me describe my position to you in a few words. Having found in
the solemn headmaster of the College Saint-Louis a tutor to whom my
uncle delegated his authority, at the age of eighteen I had gone through
all the classes; I left school as innocent as a seminarist, full of faith, on
quitting Saint-Sulpice. My mother, on her deathbed, had made my
uncle promise that I should not become a priest, but I was as pious as
though I had to take orders. On leaving college, the Abbe Loraux took
me into his house and made me study law. During the four years of
study requisite for passing all the examinations, I worked hard, but
chiefly at things outside the arid fields of jurisprudence. Weaned from
literature as I had been at college, where I lived in the headmaster's
house, I had a thirst to quench. As soon as I had read a few modern
masterpieces, the works of all the preceding ages were greedily
swallowed. I became crazy about the theatre, and for a long time I went
every night to the play, though my uncle gave me only a hundred francs
a month. This parsimony, to which the good old man was compelled by
his regard for the poor, had the effect of keeping a young man's desires
within reasonable limits.
"When I went to live with Comte Octave I was not indeed an innocent,
but I thought of my rare escapades as crimes. My uncle was so truly
angelic, and I was so much afraid of grieving him, that in all those four
years I had never spent a night out. The good man would wait till I
came in to go to bed. This maternal care had more power to keep me
within bounds than the sermons and reproaches with which the life of a

young man is diversified in a puritanical home. I was a stranger to the
various circles which make up the world of Paris society; I only knew
some women of the better sort, and none of the inferior class but those I
saw as I walked about, or in the boxes at the play, and then only from
the depths of the pit where I sat. If, at that period, any one had said to
me, 'You will see Canalis, or Camille Maupin,' I should have felt hot
coals in my head and in my bowels. Famous people were to me as gods,
who neither spoke, nor walked, nor ate like other mortals.
"How many tales of the Thousand-and-one Nights are comprehended in
the ripening of a youth! How many wonderful lamps must we have
rubbed before we understand that the True Wonderful Lamp is either
luck, or work, or genius. In some men this dream of the aroused spirit
is but brief; mine has lasted until now! In those days I always went to
sleep as Grand Duke of Tuscany,--as a millionaire,--as beloved by a
princess,--or famous! So to enter the service of Comte Octave, and
have a hundred louis a year, was entering on independent life. I had
glimpses of some chance of getting into society, and seeking for what
my heart desired most, a protectress, who would rescue me from the
paths of danger, which a young man of two-and-twenty can hardly help
treading, however prudent and well brought up he may be. I began to
be afraid of myself.
"The persistent study of other people's rights into which I had plunged
was not always enough to repress painful imaginings. Yes, sometimes
in fancy I threw myself into theatrical life; I thought I could be a great
actor; I dreamed of endless triumphs and loves, knowing nothing of the
disillusion hidden behind the curtain, as everywhere else--for every
stage has its reverse behind the scenes. I have gone out sometimes, my
heart boiling, carried away by an impulse to rush hunting through Paris,
to attach myself to some handsome woman I might meet, to follow her
to her door, watch her, write to her, throw myself on her mercy, and
conquer her by sheer force of passion. My poor uncle, a heart
consumed by charity, a child of seventy years, as clear-sighted as God,
as guileless as a man of genius, no doubt read the tumult of my soul;
for when he felt the tether by which he held me strained too tightly and
ready to break, he would never fail to say, 'Here, Maurice, you too are

poor! Here are twenty francs; go and amuse yourself, you are not a
priest!' And if you could have seen the dancing light that gilded his
gray eyes, the smile that relaxed his fine lips, puckering the