I knew that, during the war and though only sixteen years old, he had enlisted and made the campaign of the Loire, bearing all fatigues and inspiring even the veterans with courage. As I saw him at dinner this first evening, eating steadily, with that fine humor of appetite which reveals the fall life; speaking little, but with a commanding voice, I felt in a surprising degree the impression that I was in the presence of a creature different from myself, but finished and complete of his kind. It seems to me as though this scene dates from yesterday, and that I am there, while the marquis plays bezique with his daughter, talking with the marquise, and stealthily watching Count André play at billiards alone. I saw him through the open door, supple and robust in his evening dress of some light material, a cigar in the corner of his mouth, pushing the balls about with a precision so perfect that it was beautiful; and I, your pupil, I, so proud of the amplitude of my mind, followed with open mouth the slightest gestures of this young man who was absorbed in a sport so vulgar, with the kind of envious admiration which a learned monk of the middle ages, unskillful in all muscular games, must have felt in presence of a knight in armor. When I use the word envy I beg you to understand me, and not to attribute to me a baseness which was never mine. Neither this evening nor during the days which followed was I ever jealous of the name of Count André, nor of his fortune, nor of any of the social advantages which he possessed, and of which I was so deprived. Neither have I felt that strange hate of the male for the male, very finely noted by you in your pages on love. My mother had had the weakness to tell me often in my childhood that I was a pretty boy. Without being a coxcomb, I may say that there was nothing displeasing in me, neither in my face nor in my figure. I say this to you, not from vanity, but to prove that there was not an atom of vanity in the sort of sudden rivalry which made me an adversary, almost an enemy, of Count André from this first evening. There was as much admiration as envy in this antipathy. Upon reflection, I find in the sentiment which I have tried to define the probable trace of an unconscious atavism. I questioned the marquis later, whose aristocratic pride I thus flattered, upon the genealogy of the Jussat-Randons, and I believe that they are of a pure and conquering race, while in the veins of the descendant of the Lorraine farmers who writes these lines to you flows the blood of ancestors who had been slaves of the soil for centuries. Certainly, between my brain and that of Count André there is the same difference as there is between mine and yours, greater, since I can comprehend you and I defy him to follow my reasonings, even that which I am pursuing now, upon our relations.