heroes--Montmorenci, Saint-Andre, Guise--too close to them to seem
really heroic. Mark Antony, knight of Venus, of Cleopatra; shifty
Lepidus; bloody, yellow-haired Augustus, so worldly and so fine; you
might find their mimic semblance, more easily than any suggestion of
that threadbare triad of French adventurers, in the unfolding manhood
of Jasmin, Amadee, and Camille.

They had detached themselves by an irresistible natural effectiveness
from the surface of that youthful scholastic world around the
episcopal throne of Chartres, carrying its various aptitudes as if to
a perfect triple flower; restless Amadee de l'Autrec, who was to be a
soldier, dazzled early into dangerous, rebellious paths by the iron
ideal of the soldiers of "the religion," and even now fitting his
blond prettiness to airs of Huguenot austerity; Camille Pontdormi,
who meant to be a lawyer in an age in which certain legists had
asserted an audacity of genius after a manner very captivating to
youth with any appetite for predominance over its fellows--already
winsomely starched a little, amid his courtly finery, of garb, and
manner, and phrase; Jasmin de Villebon, who hardly knew what he meant
to be, except perhaps a poet--himself, certainly, a poem for any
competent reader. Vain,--yes! a little; and mad, said his
companions, of course, with his clinging, exigent, lover's ways. It
was he who had led the others on this visit to Gaston de Latour.
Threads to [50] be cut short, one by one, before his eyes, the three
would cross and recross, gaily, pathetically, in the tapestry of
Gaston's years; and, divided far asunder afterwards, seemed at this
moment, moving there before him in the confidential talk he could not
always share, inseparably linked together, like some complicated
pictorial arabesque, under the common light, of their youth, and of
the morning, and of their sympathetic understanding of the visible