beneath the nails of the handsome boy with the dark complexion, the tiny drops of negro blood, so far removed.  Between an octoroon and a creole a European can never tell the difference.  Florent had been represented as what he really was, the grandson of one of the Emperor’s best officers.  His father had taken particular pains to designate him as French, and his companions only saw in him a pupil like themselves, coming from Alabama—­that is to say, from a country almost as chimerical as Japan or China.

All who in early youth have known the torture of apprehension will be able to judge of the poor child’s agony when, after four months of a life amid the warmth of sympathy, one of the Jesuit fathers who directed the college announced to him, thinking it would afford him pleasure, the expected arrival of an American, of young Lincoln Maitland.  This was to Florent so violent a shock that he had a fever for forty-eight hours.  In after years he could remember what thoughts possessed him on the day when he descended from his room to the common refectory, sure that as soon as he was brought face to face with the new pupil he would have to sustain the disdainful glance suffered so frequently in the United States.  There was no doubt in his mind that, his origin once discovered, the atmosphere of kindness in which he moved with so much surprise would soon be changed to hostility.  He could again see himself crossing the yard; could hear himself called by Father Roberts—­the master who had told him of the expected new arrival—­and his surprise when Lincoln Maitland had given him the hearty handshake of one demi-compatriot who meets another.  He was to learn later that that reception was quite natural, coming from the son of an Englishman, educated altogether by his mother, and taken from New York to Europe before his fifth year, there to live in a circle as little American as possible.  Chapron did not reason in that manner.  He had an infinitely tender heart.  Gratitude entered it—­gratitude as impassioned as had been his fear.  One week later Lincoln Maitland and he were friends, and friends so intimate that they never parted.

The affection, which was merely to the indifferent nature of Maitland a simple college episode, became to Florent the most serious, most complete sentiment of his life.  Those fraternities of election, the loveliest and most delicate of the heart of man, usually dawn thus in youth.  It is the ideal age of passionate friendship, that period between ten and sixteen, when the spirit is so pure, so fresh, still so virtuous, so fertile in generous projects for the future.  One dreams of a companionship almost mystical with the friend from whom one has no secret, whose character one sees in such a noble light, on whose esteem one depends as upon the surest recompense, whom one innocently desires to resemble.  Indeed, they are, between the innocent lads who work side by side on a problem of geometry or a lesson in history, veritable poems