journey to the towns of Bordeaux and Marseilles, where they now are. But
should circumstances demanding concert or action arise, you may be sure
that I will either summon a meeting or transmit instructions to such of
our members as may be most usefully employed. For the present,
confreres, you are relieved. Remain only you, dear young author."




CHAPTER VII.

Left alone with Gustave Rameau, the President of the Secret Council
remained silently musing for some moments; but his countenance was no
longer moody and overcast,--his nostrils were dilated, as in triumph;
there was a half-smile of pride on his lips. Rameau watched him
curiously and admiringly. The young man had the impressionable,
excitable temperament common to Parisian genius,--especially when it
nourishes itself on absinthe. He enjoyed the romance of belonging to a
secret society; he was acute enough to recognize the sagacity by which
this small conclave was kept out of those crazed combinations for
impracticable theories more likely to lead adventurers to the Tarpeian
Rock than to the Capitol, while yet those crazed combinations might, in
some critical moment, become strong instruments in the hands of practical
ambition. Lebeau fascinated him, and took colossal proportions in his
intoxicated vision,--vision indeed intoxicated at this moment, for before
it floated the realized image of his aspirations,--a journal of which he
was to be the editor-in-chief; in which his poetry, his prose, should
occupy space as large as he pleased; through which his name, hitherto
scarce known beyond a literary clique, would resound in salon and club
and cafe, and become a familiar music on the lips of fashion. And he