habit, explained by the high prices to which colonial products rose under Napoleon.  If the use of sugar and coffee was a luxury to our parents, with us it was the sign of self-conscious superiority.  Doisy gave credit, for he reckoned on the sisters and aunts of the pupils, who made it a point of honor to pay their debts.  I resisted the blandishments of his place for a long time.  If my judges knew the strength of its seduction, the heroic efforts I made after stoicism, the repressed desires of my long resistance, they would pardon my final overthrow.  But, child as I was, could I have the grandeur of soul that scorns the scorn of others?  Moreover, I may have felt the promptings of several social vices whose power was increased by my longings.

About the end of the second year my father and mother came to Paris.  My brother had written me the day of their arrival.  He lived in Paris, but had never been to see me.  My sisters, he said, were of the party; we were all to see Paris together.  The first day we were to dine in the Palais-Royal, so as to be near the Theatre-Francais.  In spite of the intoxication such a programme of unhoped-for delights excited, my joy was dampened by the wind of a coming storm, which those who are used to unhappiness apprehend instinctively.  I was forced to own a debt of a hundred francs to the Sieur Doisy, who threatened to ask my parents himself for the money.  I bethought me of making my brother the emissary of Doisy, the mouth-piece of my repentance and the mediator of pardon.  My father inclined to forgiveness, but my mother was pitiless; her dark blue eye froze me; she fulminated cruel prophecies:  “What should I be later if at seventeen years of age I committed such follies?  Was I really a son of hers?  Did I mean to ruin my family?  Did I think myself the only child of the house?  My brother Charles’s career, already begun, required large outlay, amply deserved by his conduct which did honor to the family, while mine would always disgrace it.  Did I know nothing of the value of money, and what I cost them?  Of what use were coffee and sugar to my education?  Such conduct was the first step into all the vices.”

After enduring the shock of this torrent which rasped my soul, I was sent back to school in charge of my brother.  I lost the dinner at the Freres Provencaux, and was deprived of seeing Talma in Britannicus.  Such was my first interview with my mother after a separation of twelve years.

When I had finished school my father left me under the guardianship of Monsieur Lepitre.  I was to study the higher mathematics, follow a course of law for one year, and begin philosophy.  Allowed to study in my own room and released from the classes, I expected a truce with trouble.  But, in spite of my nineteen years, perhaps because of them, my father persisted in the system which had sent me to school without food, to an academy without pocket-money, and had driven me into debt to Doisy.  Very little