regard talent as he did nobility. Having tried the law, the notariat,
and literature, without distinguishing himself in any way, his mind
now turned to the magistracy.

About this time his father died. His mother, who contented herself in
her old age with two thousand francs a year, gave the rest of the
fortune to Godefroid. Thus possessed, at the age of twenty-five, of
ten thousand francs a year, he felt himself rich; and he was so,
relatively to the past. Until then his life had been spent on acts
without will, on wishes that were impotent; now, to advance with the
age, to act, to play a part, he resolved to enter some career or find
some connection that should further his fortunes. He first thought of
journalism, which always opens its arms to any capital that may come
in its way. To be the owner of a newspaper is to become a personage at
once; such a man works intellect, and has all the gratifications of it
and none of the labor. Nothing is more tempting to inferior minds than
to be able to rise in this way on the talents of others. Paris has
seen two or three parvenus of this kind,--men whose success is a
disgrace, both to the epoch and to those who have lent them their
shoulders.

In this sphere Godefroid was soon outdone by the brutal
Machiavellianism of some, or by the lavish prodigality of others; by
the fortunes of ambitious capitalists, or by the wit and shrewdness of
editors. Meantime he was drawn into all the dissipations that arise
from literary or political life, and he yielded to the temptations
incurred by journalists behind the scenes. He soon found himself in
bad company; but this experience taught him that his appearance was
insignificant, that he had one shoulder higher than the other, without
the inequality being redeemed by either malignancy or kindness of