In the meantime, Soulié (who then signed himself Soulié de Lavelanet) lived upon a small allowance his father made him a hundred louis, as far as I am able to remember. He lived in the rue de Provence, on the first floor, in a bewitching room that seemed a palace to us. There was, above all else, a most unwonted luxury in this room, a piano on which Soulié could play two or three tunes. He was both very radical and very aristocratic, two qualities which often went together at that period: see, for example, Carrel, whom we have already seen in the Béfort affair, and who will reappear on the scene presently, after the amnesty to be accorded by Charles X. on his accession to the throne. Soulié was brave, without being quarrelsome; but he had the sensitiveness both of the student and of the Southerner. He was passably skilful as a swordsman and a first-rate shot. Soulié at first thought me a worthless lad, of no importance; and it was quite natural he should. He was astonished and almost overwhelmed by my early successes. By that time I knew Soulié as he was; jealous almost to envy, but, by reason of the strong kindliness of his good and upright heart, able to keep all the evil tendencies of his character under control. A constant struggle was waged within him between good and bad principles, and yet not once perhaps did the evil principle get the better of him. He very often tried to hate me, but never managed to succeed: very often, when he set out to run me down in conversation, he would end by praising me. And, as a matter of fact, I was the man who hampered his career more than any other: in the theatre, in the newspapers, in the matter of books, I was everywhere in his path, doing him involuntary but actual damage everywhere; and, in spite of this, I was so certain of Soulié, and so sure of his supreme justice and goodness of heart, that, if I had needed any act of service, I should have gone to Soulié to ask it of him, rather than of any other--and he would have rendered me this service, more readily than any other person would. At first Soulié turned his attention towards poetry. It was in the domain of poetry, I believe, that he looked to make his conquests. His first stage-play was an imitation of Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet._ I never experienced greater emotion than that which I felt at the first representation of this play.