“Another glass of absinthe, boy—­one more!”

And the unhappy man would forget for a few moments longer that he ought to go back to his lonely lodging, where the servant had laid the table some time before, and his little son awaited him, yawning with hunger and reading a book placed beside his plate.  He forgot the horrible moment of returning, when he would try to hide his intoxicated condition under a feint of bad humor, and when he would seat himself at table without even kissing Amedee, in order that the child should not smell his breath.

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     Break in his memory, like a book with several leaves torn out
     Inoffensive tree which never had harmed anybody
     It was all delightfully terrible! 
     Mild, unpretentious men who let everybody run over them
     Now his grief was his wife, and lived with him
     Tediousness seems to ooze out through their bindings
     Tired smile of those who have not long to live
     Trees are like men; there are some that have no luck
     Voice of the heart which alone has power to reach the heart
     When he sings, it is because he has something to sing about

A ROMANCE OF YOUTH

By FRANCOIS COPPEE

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER V

AMEDEE MAKES FRIENDS

Meanwhile the allegorical old fellow with the large wings and white beard, Time, had emptied his hour-glass many times; or, to speak plainer, the postman, with a few flakes of snow upon his blue cloth coat, presents himself three or four times a day at his customers’ dwelling to offer in return for a trifling sum of money a calendar containing necessary information, such as the ecclesiastical computation, or the difference between the Gregorian and the Arabic Hegira; and Amedee Violette had gradually become a young man.

A young man! that is to say, a being who possesses a treasure without knowing its value, like a Central African negro who picks up one of M. Rothschild’s cheque-books; a young man ignorant of his beauty or charms, who frets because the light down upon his chin has not turned into hideous bristles, a young man who awakes every morning full of hope, and artlessly asks himself what fortunate thing will happen to him to-day; who dreams, instead of living, because he is timid and poor.

It was then that Amedee made the acquaintance of one of his comrades—­he no longer went to M. Batifol’s boarding-school, but was completing his studies at the Lycee Henri IV—­named Maurice Roger.  They soon formed an affectionate intimacy, one of those eighteen-year-old friendships which are perhaps the sweetest and most substantial in the world.