burst into another explosion of rhapsodies on the subject of
Lucilla--mixed up with renewed petitions to me to keep his story
concealed from everybody. I lost all patience with his want of common
fortitude and common sense.

"Young Oscar, I should like to box your ears!" I said. "You are in a
villainously unwholesome state about this matter. Have you nothing else
to think of? Have you no profession? Are you not obliged to work for your
living?"

I spoke, as you perceive, with some force of expression--aided by a
corresponding asperity of voice and manner.

Mr. Oscar Dubourg looked at me with the puzzled air of a man who feels an
overflow of new ideas forcing itself into his mind. He modestly admitted
the degrading truth. From his childhood upwards, he had only to put his
hand in his pocket, and to find the money there, without any preliminary
necessity of earning it first. His father had been a fashionable
portrait-painter, and had married one of his sitters--an heiress. Oscar
and Nugent had been left in the detestable position of independent
gentlemen. The dignity of labor was a dignity unknown to these degraded
young men. "I despise a wealthy idler," I said to Oscar, with my
republican severity. "You want the ennobling influence of labor to make a
man of you. Nobody has a right to be idle--nobody has a right to be rich.
You would be in a more wholesome state of mind about yourself, my young
gentleman, if you had to earn your bread and cheese before you ate it."

He stared at me piteously. The noble sentiments which I had inherited
from Doctor Pratolungo, completely bewildered Mr. Oscar Dubourg.