It is really funny when I think of it, but I finally came to feel flattered myself that William had such a relation. To me, too, Edgar was something admirable and inaccessible, like the emperor of Germany, Victor Hugo, or Paul Bourget. That is why I think it advisable to fix in these pages, from all that William told me, the portrait of this more than illustrious, this historic personage. Edgar was born in London, in a frightful den, between two hiccups of whiskey. As a boy he was a vagabond, a beggar, a thief, and a jail-bird. Later, having the requisite physical deformities and the most crapulous instincts, he was pitched on for a groom. From ante-room to stable, rubbing against all the trickery, all the rapacity, all the vice prevailing among the servants of a grand establishment, he became a "lad" in the Eaton stud. And he strutted about in a Scotch cap, a yellow and black striped waistcoat, and light pantaloons, loose at the thighs, tight at the calves, and wrinkled at the knees in the form of a screw. When scarcely an adult, he looked like a little old man, with frail limbs and furrowed face, red at the cheek-bones, yellow at the temples, with worn-out and grimacing mouth, with thin hair brushed over his ears in the form of a greasy spiral. In a society which the odor of horse-dung causes to swoon with delight Edgar was already a personage less anonymous than a workingman or a peasant,--almost a gentleman. At Eaton he learned his trade thoroughly. He knows how to groom a stylish horse, how to take care of it when it is sick, and what detailed and complicated toilets are most suitable to the color of its coat. He knows the secret of the intimate washings, the refined polishings, the expert pedicurings, and the ingenious processes of make-up, by which the beasts of the race-track, like the beasts of love, are set out and beautified. In the bar-rooms he knew important jockeys, celebrated trainers, and the big-bellied baronets, and blackleg dukes and bums, who are the _cream_ of this muck-heap and the _flower_ of this horse-dung. Edgar would have liked to become a jockey, for he soon saw all the tricks that could be played and the money that could be made. But he had grown too large. Though his legs had remained thin and bowed, he had acquired something of a corporation. He was too heavy. So, being unable to don the jockey's coat, he decided to wear the coachman's livery.