at college, plenty of wellborn acquaintances willing to recover from him
some of the plunder his father had extorted from theirs. He was too wild
to distinguish himself by academical honours, but my father said that the
tutors of the college declared there were not six undergraduates in the
University who knew as much hard and dry science as wild Louis Grayle. He
went into the world, no doubt, hoping to shine; but his father's name was
too notorious to admit the son into good society. The Polite World, it
is true, does not examine a scutcheon with the nice eye of a herald, nor
look upon riches with the stately contempt of a stoic; still the Polite
World has its family pride and its moral sentiment. It does not like to
be cheated,--I mean, in money matters; and when the son of a man who has
emptied its purse and foreclosed on its acres rides by its club-windows,
hand on haunch, and head in the air, no lion has a scowl more awful, no
hyena a laugh more dread, than that same easy, good-tempered, tolerant,
polite, well-bred World which is so pleasant an acquaintance, so languid
a friend, and--so remorseless an--enemy. In short, Louis Grayle claimed
the right to be courted,--he was shunned; to be admired,--he was loathed.
Even his old college acquaintances were shamed out of knowing him.
Perhaps he could have lived through all this had he sought to glide
quietly into position; but he wanted the tact of the well-bred, and
strove to storm his way, not to steal it. Reduced for companions to
needy parasites, he braved and he shocked all decorous opinion by that
ostentation of excess, which made Richelieus and Lauzuns the rage. But
then Richelieus and Lauzuns were dukes! He now very naturally took the
Polite World into hate,--gave it scorn for scorn. He would ally himself
with Democracy; his wealth could not get him into a club, but it would buy
him into parliament; he could not be a Lauzun, nor, perhaps, a Mirabeau,
but he might be a Danton. He had plenty of knowledge and audacity, and
with knowledge and audacity a good hater is sure to be eloquent.
Possibly, then, this poor Louis Grayle might have made a great figure,