Page:Memoirs of Hyppolite Clairon (Volume 1).djvu/35

 Ashamed of being the son of a citizen, he had disposed of his effects, in order to expend the produce at Paris, under a more elevated title. That displeased me. To blush for himself seemed to me to justify the disdain of others. His humour was gloomy and melancholy. ‘He was too well acquainted with men,’ he would say, ‘not to despise and shun them.’ His plan was to live only for me, and that I should live for him alone;—that displeased me still more, as you may well imagine. I might have been content to have been restrained by a flowery wreath, but I could not brook being confined by a chain. I from that moment saw the necessity of destroying the flattering hope which nourished his attach-