theatres, was surely not the energetic, sunburnt Zouave who had
been hunting down brigands in the Samnite hills last summer, who
spent three-fourths of his time among soldiers like himself, and
who had pledged his honour to follow the gallant Charette and
defend the Pope as long as he could carry a musket.

There is a sharp dividing line between youth and manhood.
Sometimes we cross it early, and sometimes late, but we do not
know that we are passing from one life to another as we step
across the boundary. The world seems to us the same for a while,
as we knew it yesterday and shall know it to-morrow. Suddenly, we
look back and start with astonishment when we see the past, which
we thought so near, already vanishing in the distance, shapeless,
confused, and estranged from our present selves. Then, we know
that we are men, and acknowledge, with something like a sigh, that
we have put away childish things.

When Gouache put on the gray jacket, the red sash and the yellow
gaiters, he became a man and speedily forgot Donna Tullia and her
errors, and for some time afterwards he did not care to recall
them. When he tried to remember the scenes at the studio in the
Via San Basilio, they seemed very far away. One thing alone
constantly reminded him disagreeably of the past, and that was his
unfortunate failure to catch Del Ferice when the latter had
escaped from Rome in the disguise of a mendicant friar. Anastase
had never been able to understand how he had missed the fugitive.
It had soon become known that Del Ferice had escaped by the very
pass which Gouache was patrolling, and the young Zouave had felt
the bitterest mortification in losing so valuable and so easy a
prey. He often thought of it and promised himself that he would