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Hazlet was put on to construe during the lecture, and if anything could have shaken the brazen tower of his self-confidence, it would have been the egregious display of incapacity which followed; but Hazlet rather piqued himself on his indifference to the poor blind heathen poets, on whose names he usually dealt reprobation broadcast.
It may be imagined that Hazlet was no favourite companion of Julian Home. But Julian loved and honoured to the utmost of his power the good points of all; he had a deep and real veneration for humanity, and rarely allowed himself an unkind expression, or a look which indicated ennui, even to those associates by whose presence he was most unspeakably bored.
"It matters nothing to me," said Hazlet, rising, "whether the characters I saw were written by the finger of a man's hand, or limned by spirits on the sensorium of the brain. All I know is that thank God they were there." "But there where I have garnered up my heart, Where either I must live, or bear no life; The fountain from the which my current runs Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!
In saying the last sentence, in which he cut Julian to the very quick, Hazlet had seemed to his victim's excited imagination to be actually smacking his lips with undisguised delight. "Ah, you will have still to dine at the sizars' table on the Fellows' leavings."
There was a general laugh in Saint Werner's when it was announced that Hazlet was plucked; and in Scripture History too! His follies and inconsistencies had unhappily made him a butt, but men little knew how heavily the misfortune would weigh upon him.
This did not prevent Suton from feeling a strong and righteous indignation against the iniquity of those who were inveigling another to his ruin, and he felt convinced that, as at this moment Hazlet was being unfairly treated, it was his duty in some way to interfere. He got up quietly, and walked over to Bruce's rooms.
One of them Julian instantly recognised as the very vilest of the Saint Werner "fast men;" another was Hazlet; there could be no doubt as to the company in which he was. For one second, Julian turned back to look in sheer astonishment, he could hardly believe the testimony of his own eyes.
Bruce had privately entreated them all not to snub Hazlet, as he wanted to have some fun. The supper was soon despatched, and the wine circled plentifully. It was followed by a game of cards, during which the punch-bowl stood in the centre of the table, rich, smoking, and crowned with a concoction of unprecedented strength. Hazlet was quite in his glory.
"I mean this, Hazlet; setting aside all considerations which affect your mere personal ruin not mentioning the atrophy of spiritual life and the clinging sense of degradation which is involved in such a course as yours I want you to see if you will be honest, that the fault is yet more deadly, because you involve other souls and other lives in your own destruction.
Even when Hazlet was at the worst when to be seen with him, after the publicity of his vices, involved something like a slur on a man's fair name even in these his worst days neither Julian nor Lillyston would have refused, had he so desired it, to walk with him under the lime-tree avenue, or up and down the cloisters of Warwick's Court.
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