HE WAS WRONG

AND well! Who is there that isn't? In this world we are sur- rounded by wrongs: they are necessary: they are the foundations of society: they make the mind lissome: they abate our self-love.

A man who was always right would be insupportable. A man should be pardoned all his errors except that of being a bore: that alone is irreparable. When we bore our fellow-creatures we must live at home all alone. But I am wandering from my topic.

Let us pass on the story of Mondor. He was a young man with an unfortunate nature. He has a fine intelligence, a tender heart and a sweet soul. These are three great mistakes that are bound to produce many others.

In entering society, he set himself chiefly to try to be always in the right. You will see how far that carried him. He struck up an acquaintance with a courtier and his wife: the lady found that Mondor had a fine intelligence, because he had a handsome figure; the husband found that he had but a poor intellect, because he never agreed with any of his opinions.

The lady made many advances for the sake of the fineness of his intelligence: but as he was not in love with her, he did not perceive that she was paying him attentions. The husband begged him to look over a treatise on war which he had written-so at least he claimed. Mondor, after reading the work, said quite frankly that he thought the writer would make a good negotiator for a treaty of peace.

In these circumstances, the command of a regiment fell vacant. A little abortive Marquis found that the writer of the book on war had a transcendent genius, and he treated the wife of the writer as though she were a pretty woman. He obtained the regiment: The Marquis was made Colonel. Mondor was only a true man: he was in the wrong.

This adventure upset him: he lost all idea of making a fortune, and came to Paris to live quietly, and formed å plan for making friends there. Good heavens, how wrong it was of him! He thought he found a friend in the person of the young Alice.

Alice was amiable, with a decent air and the opinions of a sound man.

One day he came to Mondor with a sorrowful face. Mondor at once felt sorry for him for there are no persons so foolish as those who have both intelligence and a good heart. Alice said that he had lost a hundred pounds. Mondor lent the money to him without a written acknowledgment. He thought by that he had won a friend. He was wrong; he never saw him again.

He took up with some men of letters. They judged him capable of examining their pieces: it was easier to obtain an audience from him than from the public. There was one man in whom Mondor thought he recognized talent: he seemed worthy of real criticism: he read his work with attention: it was a comedy. He cut out some unnecessary details, showed that it wanted more solidity, asked the author to connect his scenes and make them rise one out of the other, to give the actors always a good situation, to make the dialogue full of character instead of a diamond-paste glitter of cheap epigrams, and to build up his characters and shade them finely instead of making them crudely contrast with each other. Such was the advice he gave, and the author corrected the piece in consequence. He found that Mondor was a bad adviser: the actors said that the piece was not capable of being played.

This disgusted Mondor with giving advice. The same author, whom he had tried to help, wrote another piece which was only a scrap-heap of unshaped and disconnected scenes. Mondor did not dare to advise him not to have it played: he was wrong. The piece was hissed off the stage. This threw him into a perplexity. If he gave advice, he was wrong; if he did not give it, he was still wrong.

He renounced all commerce with the wits of the town, and mingled with men of learning. He found them almost as dull as persons who tried to be witty. They talked only when they had something to say: they were mostly silent. Mondor lost patience, and seemed to be only a giddy-minded creature. He made the acquaintance of some women of beauty-another mistake. He thought he was in a country nearer to the tropics. It was a land of lightning in which nearly all the fruit was burnt before it was ripe. He remarked that most of these women had only one idea, which they subdivided into little, shining, abstract thoughts. He perceived that all their art consisted in cutting up a little piece of wit. He saw how wrong he had been in seeking their society. He wished to reason about things and appeared awkward: he wished to shine as a wit and appeared heavy. In a word, he displeased, and felt it would not do to say to a young man: "Do

you wish to get on with women? Read the classic authors." Of all men of the world Mondor was the most reasonable, and he did not know what was the reasonable side to take. He felt that a man does wrong less from taking a bad opening than from taking a good one in a clumsy way. He had tried to be a courtier and had broken his neck at it he had tried to make friends and had been duped in friendship: he had mingled with the wits and had wearied of them: he had been bored with men of learning, and he had bored the ladies whose society he sought.

He heard some vaunt the happiness of the man and woman who truly loved each other. He thought the most sensible thing to do was to fall in love: he planned to do it: this was precisely the way of failing to know what love was. He studied all the women he met: he weighed the graces and the talents of each, in order to determine to love her who had one perfection more than the others. He thought that love was a god with whom he could trade.

In vain did he carry out this review; in vain did he force himself to fall in love. It was useless. One day, without thinking about it, he was seized with a passion for a most ugly and capricious woman: he congratulated himself on his choice. He saw, however, that she was not beautiful: he was glad of it: he flattered himself he would have no rivals. He was wrong. He did not know that the uglier a woman is the more she flirts.

None of her mincing manners, none of her glances, none of her little speeches but has its intention. She takes as much trouble to make the most of her face as a farmer does to get a crop off a poor soil. It succeeds with her; the advances she makes flatter the pride of the other sex, and the vanity of a man almost always effaces the ugliness of a woman.

This Mondor learned by sad experience. He found himself surrounded by competitors. He was disquieted by it: he was wrong; it led him into a much greater mistake, which was to marry. He treated his wife with all possible consideration; he was wrong. She took his sweetness of character for weakness, and harshly lorded it over him. He tried to quarrel; he was wrong; it led him into the further mistake of a reconciliation. During the reconciliations, he had two children that is to say two mistakes. He became a widower; here he was in the right; but he made an error out of it, for he was so afflicted, that he retired to his country estates.

In the country he found a rich man who lived in arrogant fashion; he visited none of his neighbors; Mondor thought he was wrong. He showed as much affability as the other did arrogance; this was a great mistake. His house became the haunt of small gentry who overwhelmed him without respite. He envied the lot of his neighbor; he saw too late that the misfortune of being beset with folk is far more disagreeable than the mistake of being feared. A suit was brought against him in regard to some rights of land. He preferred to give way to this unjust attack than to plead his case. He bore himself like a good fellow, gave a dinner to the other party and made a disadvantageous compromise; he was wrong. Such a good way of making money attracted the attention of the parish. All his little neighbors tried to profit by his easy ways, and laid claim without any title to some imaginary right over his estate. He had to fight twenty law actions to avoid one.

That disgusted him; he sold his lands; he was wrong. He did not know what to do with his capital; he was advised to finance a concert hall in a neighboring large town. The director was a fine fellow who had become a lawyer in order to learn to be a connoisseur of music. The musical affair went into bankruptcy at the end of a year, in spite of the charming manners of the lawyer. This event ruined Mondor. He left the nothingness of all things here below; he wished to become nothingness himself; he became a monk and died of boredom; that was his last error.