have been sensible of the opportunities to real eminence which they have
thrown away. Often we observe that there have been before them vistas
into worldly greatness which, by no uncommon prudence and exertion, would
have conducted honest men half as clever to fame and power; but, with a
strange obliquity of vision, they appear to have looked from these broad
clear avenues into some dark, tangled defile, in which, by the subtlest
ingenuity, and through the most besetting perils, they might attain at
last to the success of a fraud or the enjoyment of a vice. In crime once
indulged there is a wonderful fascination, and the fascination is, not
rarely, great in proportion to the intellect of the criminal. There is
always hope of reform for a dull, uneducated, stolid man, led by accident
or temptation into guilt; but where a man of great ability, and highly
educated, besots himself in the intoxication of dark and terrible
excitements, takes impure delight in tortuous and slimy ways, the good
angel abandons him forever.

Olivier Dalibard walked musingly on, gained a house in one of the most
desolate quarters of the abandoned faubourg, mounted the spacious stairs,
and rang at the door of an attic next the roof. After some moments the
door was slowly and cautiously opened, and two small, fierce eyes,
peering through a mass of black, tangled curls, gleamed through the
aperture. The gaze seemed satisfactory.

"Enter, friend," said the inmate, with a sort of complacent grunt; and as
Dalibard obeyed, the man reclosed and barred the door.

The room was bare to beggary; the ceiling, low and sloping, was blackened
with smoke. A wretched bed, two chairs, a table, a strong chest, a small
cracked looking-glass, completed the inventory. The dress of the
occupier was not in keeping with the chamber; true that it was not such