of making their joint fortunes than the boards of an itinerant Thespis
furnished to either. Vivian listened to him, and it was while their
intimacy was most fresh that I met them on the highroad. That chance
meeting produced (if I may be allowed to believe his assurance) a
strong, and for the moment a salutary, effect upon Vivian. The
comparative innocence and freshness of a boy's mind were new to him; the
elastic, healthful spirits with which those gifts were accompanied
startled him, by the contrast to his own forced gayety and secret gloom.
And this boy was his own cousin!

Coming afterwards to London, he adventured inquiry at the hotel in the
Strand at which I had given my address; learned where we were; and
passing one night in the street, saw my uncle at the window,--to
recognize and to fly from him. Having then some money at his disposal,
he broke off abruptly from the set in which he had been thrown. He had
resolved to return to France,--he would try for a more respectable mode
of existence. He had not found happiness in that liberty he had won,
nor room for the ambition that began to gnaw him, in those pursuits from
which his father had vainly warned him. His most reputable friend was
his old tutor; he would go to him. He went; but the tutor was now
married, and was himself a father,--and that made a wonderful alteration
in his practical ethics. It was no longer moral to aid the son in
rebellion to his father. Vivian evinced his usual sarcastic haughtiness
at the reception he met, and was requested civilly to leave the house.
Then again he flung himself on his wits at Paris. But there were plenty
of wits there sharper than his own. He got into some quarrel with the
police,--not, indeed, for any dishonest practices of his own, but from
an unwary acquaintance with others less scrupulous,--and deemed it
prudent to quit France. Thus had I met him again, forlorn and ragged,
in the streets of London.