The general now began to think, with excellent reason, very sound judgment, and profound calculation, that it was time for him to be more considerate. The reader will pardon us the expression, which, in his case, meant to enter upon a life of usefulness and devotion to the interests of the country--without sacrificing his own, it will be understood. Influenced by these grave considerations, our young leader subscribed to newspapers, bought books and read some of them, though he soon forgot precisely which he had read and which not; wrote a memorial on river navigation, and another upon the _Renta del Excusado_;[56] made short speeches as a preparation for longer ones, which succeeded very well and met with the entire approbation of his hearers; and, in the time it takes to say a devout _amen_, exchanged the rakish air of the young blood for the pompous tone of the prominent and influential citizen. Our friend, as may be seen, had reached his apogee: in confirmation of which--among other sacrifices made to seriousness--he had procured a good cook, and loosened the lacings of his stays. Nevertheless--since there is a difference between a serious man and a moral one--our hero maintained a sort of toned-down dissoluteness behind the scenes, where he and his intimates entertained themselves in conversations tissued with a variety of subjects, such as the discourse _A_ and the scandal _B_; the concordat and the theatre royal; the ministry and the _danseuse_; the bishop and the prima donna; the crown and cards; erected a throne to Tauromaquia; proposed an apotheosis of industry; and passed a vote of censure upon the luxury of novenas. “Look here, _little one_!” said to him just such another “_little one_” at a breakfast party--where champagne was made to represent the tone of good society that the greater part of the guests lacked--“what has become of _La Lucia_?” “She was not very well, and I left her in Sevilla,” responded the hero. “Doesn’t it strike you that she is losing her varnish?” “At twenty-one, man?” “It is not singular,” remarked the elegant son of a capitalist (the youth had been educated in France). “At that age, one who lives fast is _sur le retour_.”[57] “The existence of _camellias_ is like that of roses,” quickly added another, whose Christian name of Bonifacio they were in the habit of contracting into _Boni_. Having constituted himself an inseparable copy of the engrafted Parisian, and not wishing to fall behind his model in anything, _Boni_ never allowed the capitalist to express an idea without instantly reproducing it in different words, always endeavoring to surpass the original in elegant Gallicisms; in scepticism of the most material, and cynicism of the most approved kind, and in extreme affectation of the fashionable foreign mannerism. “You ought to place this Lucia _dis_-lucent among the number of the thousand-and-one Didos,” said the would-be Gaul.