“And henceforth, I suppose, your travels will be confined to your library,” I said, smiling.

“Exactly so.  I may say, with Hazlitt, that ’food, warmth, sleep, and a book,’ are all I require.  With those I may make the tour of the world, and incur neither expense nor fatigue.”

“Books, after all, are friends,” I said, with a sigh.

“Sir,” replied the traveller, waving his hand somewhat theatrically, “books are our first real friends, and our last.  I have no others.  I wish for no others.  I rely upon no others.  They are the only associates upon whom a sensible man may depend.  They are always wise, and they are always witty.  They never intrude upon us when we desire to be alone.  They never speak ill of us behind our backs.  They are never capricious, and never surly; neither are they, like some clever folks, pertinaciously silent when we most wish them to shine.  Did Shakespeare ever refuse his best thoughts to us, or Montaigne decline to be companionable?  Did you ever find Moliere dull? or Lamb prosy? or Scott unentertaining?”

“You remind me,” said I, laughing, “of the student in Chaucer, who desired for his only pleasure and society,

     “’—–­at his bedde’s head
     A’twenty bokes clothed in black and red,
     Of Aristotle and his philosophy!’”

“Ay,” replied my new acquaintance, “but he preferred them expressly to ‘robes riche, or fidel or sautrie,’ whereas, I prefer them to men and women, and to Aristotle and his philosophy, into the bargain!”

“Your own philosophy, at least, is admirable,” said I.  “For many a year—­I might almost say for most years of my life—­I have been a disciple in the same school.”

“Sir, you cannot belong to a better.  Think of the convenience of always carrying half a dozen intimate friends in your pocket!  Good-afternoon.”

We had now come to a point where two paths diverged, and the reading traveller, always economical of time, opened his book where he had last turned down the leaf, and disappeared round the corner.

I never saw him again; but his theory amused me, and, as trifles will sometimes do even in the gravest matters, decided me.  So the result of all my hopes and reflections was, that I went back to England and to the student life that had been the dream of my youth.

CHAPTER LV.

MY BIRTHDAY.

Three years of foreign travel, and five of retirement at home, brought my twenty-ninth birthday.  I was still young, it is true; but how changed from that prime of early manhood when I used to play Romeo at midnight to Hortense upon her balcony!  I looked at myself in the glass that morning, and contemplated the wearied, bronzed, and bearded face which

“...seared by toil and something touched by time,”

now gave me back glance for glance.  I looked older than my age by many years.  My eyes had grown grave with a steadfast melancholy, and streaks of premature silver gleamed here and there in the still abundant hair which had been the solitary vanity of my youth.