"Your love, Morton," said Aubrey, drawing back, but apparently in pride, not anger; "your love: I ask nothing more."
"Of a surety, kind Aubrey," said I, "the favour seems somewhat slight to have caused your modesty such delay in requesting it. I think you have been now some years nerving your mind to the exertion."
"Listen to me, Morton," said Aubrey, suppressing his emotion; "you have always been my favourite brother. From our first childhood my heart yearned to you. Do you remember the time when an enraged bull pursued me, and you, then only ten years old, placed yourself before it and defended me at the risk of your own life? Do you think I could ever forget that,—child as I was?—never, Morton, never!"
Before I could answer the door was thrown open, and the Abbe entered. "Children," said he, and the single light of the room shone full upon his unmoved, rigid, commanding features—"children, be as Heaven intended you,—friends and brothers. Morton, I have wronged you, I own it; here is my hand: Aubrey, let all but early love, and the present promise of excellence which your brother displays, be forgotten."
With these words the priest joined our hands. I looked on my brother, and my heart melted. I flung myself into his arms and wept.
"This is well," said Montreuil, surveying us with a kind of grim complacency, and, taking my brother's arm, he blest us both, and led Aubrey away.
That day was a new era in my boyish life. I grew henceforth both better and worse. Application and I having once shaken hands became very good acquaintance. I had hitherto valued myself upon supplying the frailties of a delicate frame by an uncommon agility in all bodily exercises. I now strove rather to improve the deficiencies of my mind, and became orderly, industrious, and devoted to study. So far so well; but as I grew wiser, I grew also more wary. Candour no longer seemed to me the finest of virtues. I thought before i spoke: and second thought sometimes quite changed the nature of the intended speech; in short, gentlemen of the next century, to tell you the exact truth, the little Count Devereux became somewhat of a hypocrite!
CHAPTER IV.
A CONTEST OF ART AND A LEAGUE OF FRIENDSHIP.—TWO CHARACTERS IN MUTUAL IGNORANCE OF EACH OTHER, AND THE READER NO WISER THAN EITHER OF THEM.
THE Abbe was now particularly courteous to me. He made Gerald and myself breakfast with him, and told us nothing was so amiable as friendship among brothers. We agreed to the sentiment, and, like all philosophers, did not agree a bit the better for acknowledging the same first principles. Perhaps, notwithstanding his fine speeches, the Abbe was the real cause of our continued want of cordiality. However, we did not fight any more: we avoided each other, and at last became as civil and as distant as those mathematical lines which appear to be taking all possible pains to approach one another and never get a jot the nearer for it. Oh! your civility is the prettiest invention possible for dislike! Aubrey and I were inseparable, and we both gained by the intercourse. I grew more gentle, and he more masculine; and, for my part, the kindness of his temper so softened the satire of mine that I learned at last to smile full as often as to sneer.