The Parisians, Book 1.

e?" asked Lemercier, as their c

s if I had been at a 'Sabbat,' of which the wizards were

be tempted by him. The fiend always loved to haunt empty places; an

t the Bourse? or is not one m

called necessary comforts. Prices are risen enormously, house-rent doubled within the last five or six years; all articles of luxury are very much dearer; the very gloves I wear cost twenty per cent more than I used to pay for gloves of the same quality. How the people we meet live, an

fail in their schemes of fortune, after one, two, three, or four years, vanish. What becomes of them, I know no more than I do what becomes of the old moons. Their place is immediately supplied by new candidates. Paris is thus kept perennially sumptuous and splendid by the gold it engulfs. But then some men succeed,-succeed prodigiously, preternaturally; they make colossal fortunes, which are magni

appearance to be gentlemen, evidently not mere spectators,-eager, anxious, with tablets in their hands. That old or middle-aged men should find

g now suppressed, young men were the majority; in the days of your chivalrous forefathers it was the young nobles, not the old, who would stake their very mantles and sword

never considered Alain's equal in ability or book-learning. What a stride beyond his school-fellow had Lemercier now made! How dull and st

acknowledge that there is a rank of mind as well as of birth, and in the first he felt that Lemercie

w to carry himself, but after a year's discipline the raw recruit may excel in martial air the upright hero whom he now despairingly admires, and never dre