Social inequalities were not noticeable among schoolmates; but in 1821, his studies being ended, Godefroid, who was then with a notary, became aware of the distance that separated him from those with whom he had hitherto lived on familiar terms.
Obliged to go through the law school, he there found himself among a crowd of the sons of the bourgeoisie, who, without fortunes to inherit or hereditary distinctions, could look only to their own personal merits or to persistent toil.The hopes that his father and mother, then retired from business, placed upon him stimulated the youth's vanity without exciting his pride.His parents lived simply, like the thrifty Dutch, spending only one fourth of an income of twelve thousand francs.They intended their savings, together with half their capital, for the purchase of a notary's practice for their son.
Subjected to the rule of this domestic economy, Godefroid found his immediate state so disproportioned to the visions of himself and his parents, that he grew discouraged.In some feeble natures discouragement turns to envy; others, in whom necessity, will, reflection, stand in place of talent, march straight and resolutely in the path traced out for bourgeois ambitions.Godefroid, on the contrary, revolted, wished to shine, tried several brilliant ways, and blinded his eyes.He endeavored to succeed; but all his efforts ended in proving the fact of his own impotence.Admitting at last the inequality that existed between his desires and his capacities, he began to hate all social supremacies, became a Liberal, and attempted to reach celebrity by writing a book; but he learned, to his cost, to regard talent as he did nobility.Having tried the law, the notariat, and literature, without distinguishing himself in any way, his mind now turned to the magistracy.
About this time his father died.His mother, who contented herself in her old age with two thousand francs a year, gave the rest of the fortune to Godefroid.Thus possessed, at the age of twenty-five, of ten thousand francs a year, he felt himself rich; and he was so, relatively to the past.Until then his life had been spent on acts without will, on wishes that were impotent; now, to advance with the age, to act, to play a part, he resolved to enter some career or find some connection that should further his fortunes.He first thought of journalism, which always opens its arms to any capital that may come in its way.To be the owner of a newspaper is to become a personage at once; such a man works intellect, and has all the gratifications of it and none of the labor.Nothing is more tempting to inferior minds than to be able to rise in this way on the talents of others.Paris has seen two or three parvenus of this kind,--men whose success is a disgrace, both to the epoch and to those who have lent them their shoulders.
In this sphere Godefroid was soon outdone by the brutal Machiavellianism of some, or by the lavish prodigality of others; by the fortunes of ambitious capitalists, or by the wit and shrewdness of editors.Meantime he was drawn into all the dissipations that arise from literary or political life, and he yielded to the temptations incurred by journalists behind the scenes.He soon found himself in bad company; but this experience taught him that his appearance was insignificant, that he had one shoulder higher than the other, without the inequality being redeemed by either malignancy or kindness of nature.Such were the truths these artists made him feel.
Small, ill-made, without superiority of mind or settled purpose, what chance was there for a man like that in an age when success in any career demands that the highest qualities of the mind be furthered by luck, or by tenacity of will which commands luck.
The revolution of 1830 stanched Godefroid's wounds.He had the courage of hope, which is equal to that of despair.He obtained an appointment, like other obscure journalists, to a government situation in the provinces, where his liberal ideas, conflicting with the necessities of the new power, made him a troublesome instrument.
Bitten with liberalism, he did not know, as cleverer men did, how to steer a course.Obedience to ministers he regarded as sacrificing his opinions.Besides, the government seemed to him to be disobeying the laws of its own origin.Godefroid declared for progress, where the object of the government was to maintain the /statu quo/.He returned to Paris almost poor, but faithful still to the doctrines of the Opposition.