him feel that humiliation from which his father had suffered so much.
The youth of twelve, silent and absurdly sensitive, who made his
appearance on the lawn of the peaceful English college on an autumn
morning, brought with him a self-love already bleeding, to whom it was a
delightful surprise to find himself among comrades of his age who did not
even seem to suspect that any difference separated them from him. It
required the perception of a Yankee to discern, beneath the nails of the
handsome boy with the dark complexion, the tiny drops of negro blood, so
far removed. Between an octoroon and a creole a European can never tell
the difference. Florent had been represented as what he really was, the
grandson of one of the Emperor's best officers. His father had taken
particular pains to designate him as French, and his companions only saw
in him a pupil like themselves, coming from Alabama--that is to say, from
a country almost as chimerical as Japan or China.

All who in early youth have known the torture of apprehension will be
able to judge of the poor child's agony when, after four months of a life
amid the warmth of sympathy, one of the Jesuit fathers who directed the
college announced to him, thinking it would afford him pleasure, the
expected arrival of an American, of young Lincoln Maitland. This was
to Florent so violent a shock that he had a fever for forty-eight hours.
In after years he could remember what thoughts possessed him on the day
when he descended from his room to the common refectory, sure that as
soon as he was brought face to face with the new pupil he would have to
sustain the disdainful glance suffered so frequently in the United
States. There was no doubt in his mind that, his origin once discovered,
the atmosphere of kindness in which he moved with so much surprise would
soon be changed to hostility. He could again see himself crossing the
yard; could hear himself called by Father Roberts--the master who had
told him of the expected new arrival--and his surprise when Lincoln