of my parents, of my home, he evinced either so impertinent an ennui or
assumed so chilling a sneer that I usually hurried away from him, as
well as the subject, in indignant disgust. Once especially, when I
asked him to let me introduce him to my father,--a point on which I was
really anxious, for I thought it impossible but that the devil within
him would be softened by that contact,--he said, with his low, scornful
laugh,--

"My dear Caxton, when I was a child I was so bored with 'Telemachus'
that, in order to endure it, I turned it into travesty."

"Well?"

"Are you not afraid that the same wicked disposition might make a
caricature of your Ulysses?"

I did not see Mr. Vivian for three days after that speech; and I should
not have seen him then, only we met, by accident, under the Colonnade of
the Opera-House. Vivian was leaning against one of the columns, and
watching the long procession which swept to the only temple in vogue
that Art has retained in the English Babel. Coaches and chariots
blazoned with arms and coronets, cabriolets (the brougham had not then
replaced them) of sober hue but exquisite appointment, with gigantic
horses and pigmy "tigers," dashed on, and rolled off before him. Fair
women and gay dresses, stars and ribbons, the rank and the beauty of the
patrician world,--passed him by. And I could not resist the compassion
with which this lonely, friendless, eager, discontented spirit inspired
me, gazing on that gorgeous existence in which it fancied itself formed
to shine, with the ardor of desire and the despair of exclusion.
By one glimpse of that dark countenance, I read what was passing