"What ground have you for these charges?"

"Thy vanity, dear poet, is so great that it intrudes itself even into
thy friendships!" cried Fulgence. "All vanity of that sort is a
symptom of shocking egoism, and egoism poisons friendship."

"Oh! dear," said Lucien, "you cannot know how much I love you all."

"If you loved us as we love you, would you have been in such a hurry
to return the money which we had such pleasure in lending? or have
made so much of it?"

"We don't lend here; we give," said Joseph Bridau roughly.

"Don't think us unkind, dear boy," said Michel Chrestien; "we are
looking forward. We are afraid lest some day you may prefer a petty
revenge to the joys of pure friendship. Read Goethe's _Tasso_, the great
master's greatest work, and you will see how the poet-hero loved
gorgeous stuffs and banquets and triumph and applause. Very well, be
Tasso without his folly. Perhaps the world and its pleasures tempt
you? Stay with us. Carry all the cravings of vanity into the world of
imagination. Transpose folly. Keep virtue for daily wear, and let
imagination run riot, instead of doing, as d'Arthez says, thinking
high thoughts and living beneath them."

Lucien hung his head. His friends were right.

"I confess that you are stronger than I," he said, with a charming
glance at them. "My back and shoulders are not made to bear the burden