which he mistook for fame might have settled down into some solid and
useful ambition. He might have become great in the world's eye, for at
the service of his desires there were no ordinary talents. Though too
true a Parisian to be a severe student, still, on the whole, he had
acquired much general information, partly from books, partly from varied
commerce with mankind. He had the gift, both by tongue and by pen, of
expressing himself with force and warmth; time and necessity had improved
that gift. Coveting, during his brief career of fashion, the
distinctions which necessitate lavish expenditure, he had been the most
reckless of spendthrifts; but the neediness which follows waste had never
destroyed his original sense of personal honour. Certainly Victor de
Mauleon was not, at the date of his fall, a man to whom the thought of
accepting, much less of stealing, the jewels of a woman who loved him
could have occurred as a possible question of casuistry between honour
and temptation. Nor could that sort of question have, throughout the
sternest trials or the humblest callings to which his after-life had been
subjected, forced admission into his brain. He was one of those men,
perhaps the most terrible though unconscious criminals, who are the
offsprings produced by intellectual power and egotistical ambition. If
you had offered to Victor de Mauleon the crown of the Caesars, on
condition of his doing one of those base things which "a gentleman"
cannot do, pick a pocket, cheat at cards,--Victor de Mauleon would have
refused the crown. He would not have refused on account of any laws of
morality affecting the foundations of the social system, but from the
pride of his own personality. "I, Victor de Mauleon! I pick a pocket!
I cheat at cards! I!" But when something incalculably worse for the
interests of society than picking a pocket or cheating at cards was
concerned; when for the sake either of private ambition or political
experiment hitherto untested, and therefore very doubtful, the peace and
order and happiness of millions might be exposed to the release of the